Effect of shorted blade impeller on radial centrifugal pump characteristics

Abstract EN

A series of experiments were carried out on four different impeller configurations with different shorted blades positions, and compared with different hydraulic parameters.

These four impellers configurations have mid way, near suction side, near pressure side and both suction and pressure side shorted blade.

A computational model using “Fluent” commercial package is constructed to predict the performance parameters of centrifugal pumps and to analyses the flow field in the impellers' passages for each impeller configuration.

The experimental results for five different impeller configurations show that, mid way shorted blade impeller improves the efficiency by 30 % increase of the best efficiency point of standard impeller at 2900 rpm.

Impeller with shorted blade near pressure side shows improvement of pump efficiency at all speed comparing to standard impeller but lower than the improvement of mid way shorted blade impeller.

While Impeller with shorted blade near suction side has no effect in improving pumps efficiency.

Computational results show a reduction in flow circulation for all shorted blade impeller comparing to standard impeller, especially for the impeller with Mid way shorted blade position.

Also static pressure distributions at impeller exit became more uniform for impeller with mid way shorted blade and impeller with two shorted blades.