CFD for Centrifugal Pumps: A Review of the State-of-the-Art

The flow analysis inside the centrifugal pump is highly complex mainly due to 3D flow structure involving turbulence, secondary flow, cavitation and unsteadiness. In recent years, a growing availability of computational resources and progress in the accuracy of numerical methods brought turbo machinery Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods from pure research work into the competitive industrial markets. The critical review of CFD analysis of centrifugal pumps along with the future scopes for further improvement is presented in this paper. CFD technique has been applied by the researchers to carry out different investigations on centrifugal pumps viz. performance prediction at design and off-design conditions, parametric study, cavitation analysis, diffuser pump analysis, performance of pump running in turbine mode etc. Unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations together with two equation k-ɛ turbulence model were found to be appropriate for CFD analysis of centrifugal pump. Volute flow study and impeller-volute interaction appeared as an interesting research fields for the further improvement in the pump performance. The most active areas of research and development are the analysis of two phase flow, pump handling non -Newtonian fluids and fluid–structure interaction.