Mehrdad Zangeneh, adt technology
Volutes and casing can play a very important on the stage efficiency of centrifugal pumps, especially at off-design conditions. However, they are generally designed by using one-dimensional design methods based on conservation of mass flow and angular momentum leaving the impeller. Volutes designed in this way are generally over-sized in order to compensate for circumferentially non-uniformity in the flow that usually observed especially at higher than design flow conditions.
In TURBOdesign Volute, which is released with TURBOdesign Suite 5.2, we have developed a new 2D inverse design method for volute design which allows the designer to design the volute for circumferentially non-uniform flow entering the volute and hence optimise the efficiency at design and off-deisgn conditions. The code allows the designer to specify various cross-section shapes or arbitrary cross-sections controlled by b-spline. The volute geometry can be exported to clean IGES surface file that be meshed quickly. TURBOdesign volute does remove the need for complicated and time-consuming CAD work in generating the volute and help to design high performance unconventional volutes in a few seconds.
