Investigation of centrifugal pump characteristics

Abstract

A pump is generally used to induce flow and raise the pressure of a liquid. Centrifugal pumps are a category of dynamic pumps. The working principle of centrifugal pumps involves imparting energy to the liquid by means of a centrifugal force developed by the rotation of an impeller that has several blades or vanes. Education on centrifugal pump systems is important for future engineers, working with agricultural, forest and road construction machinery. For engineering education particularly is needed virtual presentation of laboratory work, especially in centrifugal pump performance determination. On the basis of the experimental test bench obtained centrifugal pump head - capacity and pipeline system resistance curve analyses, it was determined that the curves have a parabolic shape. Difference between the experimentally and analytically obtained centrifugal pump head - capacity curve values are les then 5.7%. Analytical model of the pipeline system resistance curve individual for each student lets change the shape of the curve in order to obtain different operating point values. The aim of the present investigation is to improve online engineering education in fluid mechanics, which is used instead of face-to-face learning. By giving students individual coefficients for the parabolic network characteristic equation, they graphically obtain different operating points for the centrifugal pump. This allows students to understand the main method of control of a centrifugal pump - by changing the resistance of the network. The analytical equations of the pump head - capacity characteristic and pipeline system resistance curve allow to model centrifugal pump series and parallel application more conveniently.