Effects of Slotted Impeller Configurations on the Hydraulic Performance of Double-Suction Pump

Abstract

A double-suction centrifugal pump is widely used in various industrial fields due to its stable and durable operability. There are many studies to improve pump performance, but in most cases changes in blade angle and thickness have been considered. In this paper, the optimal design was performed to improve the hydraulic performance of the double-suction centrifugal pump by applying slotted blade geometry. The shape of the slotted impeller is defined by angle, clearance, and location. A range of values, for each parameter, were selected and used in the design of experiments (DOE). An optimized space-filling design sampling technique (OSFD) was used to select 25 points for optimization through the response surface method. Response surfaces effectively analyze the correlation between the design variables and performance variables. The objective of the optimization is to increase efficiency. The numerical results of the optimized model are graphically depicted and compared with the coefficients using the ANSYS CFX. Through comparison with the results from the reference model, it is shown that the optimized slotted impeller decreased the turbulence kinetic energy and stabilized the flow.