Centrifugal Pump design and analysis with the help of solidworks

Centrifugal Pump Test -

This mini project was all about simulating the water flow through the centrifugal pump to find out the pressure ratio and the mass flow rate at the outlet runner.

Geometry Creation –

There was basically two bodies created for the centrifugal pump.

1] Volute/casing 2] Impeller.

This geometry creation was simple. The dimensions of the different parts are taken from assumptions.

While simulating this project, we can’t actually rotate the impeller so we have to create a boss extrude just to give this controlled volume a rotation (This is just to makSolidWorksks understand that this much volume is rotating. So additional volume is created for the rotational effect of the pump.

Create lids.

Starting with solidworks simulation –

1] New Wizard –

Keep the unit system default.

Flow – Internal unsteady fluid Flow with rotation.

Working Fluid – Water

2] make sure the rotating controlled volume is not taken into consideration as a wall. This is done by unchecking the box which can found in component control under input data.

3] Boundary Conditions –

1} Inlet Boundary Condition – environmental pressure

2} Outlet Boundary Condition – outlet velocity (10 m/s)

4] Meshing –

Automatic level – 3

Advanced channel refinement is used.

We am going for 600 iterations because the values can be converge below 100 iterations too and sometimes those can give us the wrong results.

5] Goals created –

Surface goals-

1. Outlet Avg pressure (Pa)
2. Inlet Avg pressure (Pa)
3. Pressure Ratio
4. Mass Flow Rate at the outlet

6] Insert flow trajectories see water flow movement(FOR pressure and velocity).

Results –

For 1] outlet velocity 10 m/s

Flow Trajectories for pressure -

For 2] outlet velocity 15 m/s

Flow Trajectories for pressure -

For 3] outlet velocity 20 m/s

Flow Trajectories for pressure -

For 4] outlet velocity 25 m/s

Flow Trajectories for pressure -

The total results and goal plots -

Conclusion -

1] As the outlet velocity increases the pressure ratio decreases with it (The total outlet pressure is lower than the total pressure at the inlet (We can see the blue colour is getting lighter at the outlet. (The pressure ration won\'t have any unit because it is a ratio of pressure )

2] As the outlet velocity increases the mass flow rate increases with it { because mass flow rate = density * area * velocity }. If velocity increases the mass flow rate will also increase.

The graph is going downwards because software took negative values for the mass flow rate.You have to take the magnitude of the values we are getting. The mass flow rate is never negative