CFD simulations in centrifugal pumps

The design of hydraulic turbomachines has reached the stage were improvements can only be achieved through a detailed understanding of the internal flow. The prediction of the flow in such equipment is very complicated due to the rotation and the curved three-dimensional shape of the impellers. Furthermore, the flow in turbomachines shows unsteady behavior, especially at off-design conditions, as a result of interaction between impeller and pump casing. Considering these complexities, computer simulations will become increasingly important. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis is being increasingly applied in the design of centrifugal pumps. With the aid of the CFD approach, the complex internal flows in water pump impellers, which are not fully understood yet, can be well predicted, to speed up the pump design procedure. Thus, CFD is an important tool for pump designers. The use of CFD tools in turbomachinery industry is quite common today. Many tasks can numerically be solved much faster and cheaper than by means of experiments. Nevertheless the highly unsteady flow in turbomachinery raises the question of the most appropriate method for modeling the rotation of the impeller.