CFD modelling to aid the design of steel sheet multistage pumps

Multistage, steel-sheet, centrifugal pumps require shapes that differ from those commonly featured by cast or moulded units. The available literature on pumps design deals mainly with the latter and does not support satisfactorily the hydraulic design of the former. The availability of experimental data is scarce as well. On the other hand, validated CFD models proved to be an effective design tool. The paper deals with the numerical investigation of a vertical multistage pump. It aims at presenting a CFD modelling approach that is computationally low-cost and suited for the early and intermediate steps of hydraulic design of mass production pumps. A single passage of one intermediate stage was modelled by using the Multiple Reference Frame technique and the Arbitrary Matching Interface approach within the open source OpenFOAM ® environment. The influence of the multistage configuration on numerical predictions was accounted analytically. Standard k-epsilon model and wall function approach were used for turbulence closure. This modelling strategy was validated by comparison of the calculated hydraulic performance, efficiency and power consumption with experimental data.