Novel Design of Centrifugal Pump Impellers Using Generated Machining Method and CFD

Abstract

A novel design approach that combines manufacturing process and numerical simulation is proposed for centrifugal pump impellers in this study. We aim to provide a fast design methodology for centrifugal pump impellers. The geometric design of impeller is obtained by means of cubic spline and the manufacturing process is based on the generated machining method for five-axis control machine tools. The feature of this study is that the centrifugal impeller design with a well-behaved flow field could practically be manufactured. For the numerical simulation, a commercial CFD software (CFX-TASCflow) is used to solve the three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations in a rotating cylindrical coordinate system. Besides, an artificial neural network combined with the complex optimization method is also proposed to solve the inverse problem of a centrifugal impeller when the basic geometric parameters and the hub-shroud contours are known, and the expected velocity distribution of blade surface is given. Results of this study show that efficiency and performance of the designed impeller are higher than those of the initial impeller in the same operation condition.