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Inclusion of Blockage Effects in Inverse Design of Centrifugal Pump Impeller Blades

Singh, Rahul
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1427813446

Abstract Details

2015, MS, University of Cincinnati, Engineering and Applied Science: Mechanical Engineering.
The design and analysis of turbo-machinery are complex tasks due to the complexity of the geometry and the flow physics. The application of various computational tools to evaluate the performance of a specified geometry is commonly designated as a direct method. In a direct design approach designer's experience and talent are vital factors to reduce the number of trials while in an inverse design approach designer needs to prescribe the performance function as an input. It is often desirable to apply the inverse design approach, in which performance parameters are prescribed in the form of performance functions, the so called loading distribution, to obtain the corresponding geometry of pump as the result. At the start of an inverse design technique, the desired performance functions are prescribed as input quantities, and an initial, guessed shape of the impeller blade geometry is changed iteratively to arrive at the converged shape. The present study has developed a procedure for inverse design of a two-dimensional centrifugal pump impeller blades using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software, OpenFOAM (an open-source CFD software) and FLUENT. In the current work, the Gambit software is used for geometry development, domain decomposition, and grid generation. In this thesis, OpenFOAM is used to solve for the in-viscid flow in the passage formed by two adjacent blades of a pump. FLUENT is used to solve full Navier-Stokes equations to calculate blockage factor distribution along the meridional plane. The evolving blade shapes are computed by using flow tangency condition; the viscous effects in the mean flow are introduced indirectly by using the blockage effects from viscous simulations. Polynomial curve fitting techniques is used to generate the loading distribution of circulation. During each step of the current inverse design technique, the flow field analysis and blade shape calculations are performed alternately, while satisfying the boundary condition based on the loading distribution function at each step, until a fully converged solution is achieved. All the steps involved in the technique are automated by linking the individual codes in a Linux shell script. The blade shape and flow domain changes with each iteration, which means the grid also changes with each iteration. It is very time consuming to generate grid manually at each iteration, so a journal file is written in Gambit, which is executed automatically with each iteration and generates a mesh. The generated mesh is imported in OpenFOAM, where the flow analysis is done using the laplacianFOAM module of OpenFOAM, using boundary conditions based on the prescribed performance function. The tentative performance function is obtained using the circulation distribution, which is accommodated by modifying the laplacianFOAM solver. The viscous flow is solved between passages of two consecutive blades of the impeller to find the blockage factor distribution, using FLUENT. The current inverse design process is verified for a logarithmic spiral blade. Thus, the current work gives a good approach of incorporating blockage via viscous effects in the mean flow for an impeller geometry using OpenFOAM and FLUENT.
Urmila Ghia, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Kirti Ghia, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Milind Jog, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
92 p.
Mechanical Engineering
Inverse Design; Two dimensional; logarithmic blade; OpenFOAM; FLUENT; Blockage effect

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Singh, R. (2015). Inclusion of Blockage Effects in Inverse Design of Centrifugal Pump Impeller Blades [Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1427813446

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Singh, Rahul. Inclusion of Blockage Effects in Inverse Design of Centrifugal Pump Impeller Blades. 2015. University of Cincinnati, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1427813446.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Singh, Rahul. "Inclusion of Blockage Effects in Inverse Design of Centrifugal Pump Impeller Blades." Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1427813446

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.
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