The Influence of Turbulence Modeling Technique on Centrifugal Pump Simulation

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Mechanical Power Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Menoufyia University, Shebin El-Kom, Egypt.

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative study on the performance of different turbulence models for simulating the internal flow in a centrifugal pump. The models either depend on Boussinesq hypothesis or solve separate equation for each turbulence stress. These models include Reynolds stress model (RSM) Three dimensional unsteady RANS equations are solved. The effect of predicted turbulence quantity on the most unsteady parameter inside the pump (impeller-volute interaction) is performed using sliding mesh technique. The numerical results at different position within the pump are compared with experimental form literature. The experimental results of radial and relative tangential velocity were obtained using Laser Doppler Velocimeter (LDV). Although each turbulence model indicates some physical phenomena which cannot be predicted by the others, the standard k-ε model proves quantitatively its ability to perform this task. This conclusion is deduced from the analysis of the mean deviation error for all tested models. Moreover, some physical phenomena inside the pump are analyzed.

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