Influence of Blade Outlet Angle and Blade Thickness on Performance and Internal Flow Conditions of Mini Centrifugal Pump

Abstract

Mini centrifugal pumps having a diameter smaller than 100mm are employed in many fields; automobile radiator pump, ventricular assist pump, cooling pump for electric devices and so on. Further, the needs for mini centrifugal pumps would become larger with the increase of the application of it for electrical machines. It is desirable that the mini centrifugal pump design be as simple as possible as precise manufacturing is required. But the design method for the mini centrifugal pump is not established because the internal flow condition for these small-sized fluid machines is not clarified and conventional theory is not suitable for small-sized pumps. Therefore, we started research on the mini centrifugal pump for the purpose of development of high performance mini centrifugal pumps with simple structure. Three types of rotors with different outlet angles are prepared for an experiment. The performance tests are conducted with these rotors in order to investigate the effect of the outlet angle on performance and internal flow condition of mini centrifugal pumps. In addition to that, the blade thickness is changed because blockage effect in the mini centrifugal pump becomes relatively larger than that of conventional pumps. On the other hand, a three dimensional steady numerical flow analysis is conducted with the commercial code (ANSYS-Fluent) to investigate the internal flow condition. It is clarified from the experimental results that head of the mini centrifugal pump increases according to the increase of the blade outlet angle and the decrease of the blade thickness. In the present paper, the performance of the mini centrifugal pump is shown and the internal flow condition is clarified with the results of the experiment and the numerical flow analysis. Furthermore, the effects of the blade outlet angle and the blade thickness on the performance are investigated and the internal flow of each type of rotor is clarified by the numerical analysis results.