Comparison of Stresses in Blade of a Mixed Flow Pump Impeller Designed Using Mean Stream Line Method and Free Vortex Method

Mixed flow pumps have got a wide range of application having been applied to large scale liquid transfer tasks such as irrigation, flood control, dewatering and power station cooling systems. Making them more efficient is a major challenge. Their efficient performance depends upon the design of the impeller which in turn depends upon the blade profile. From the day of its invention various methods have been used for designing the blade profile. Some of the prominent methods are inverse time Marching method, the Pseudo-stream function method, Fourier expansion Singularity method, Free vortex method, Mean stream line theory method etc. Also, Calculation of stresses in the pump blades is one of the most important tasks in enhancing their performance. A blade failure can lead to severe damage of the pump. Having the importance of blade stresses acknowledged, the analysis of the stresses needs to be of high accuracy. The analysis process must be properly validated. In the present work a comparison analysis had been carried out for the stresses in blade of the mixed flow pump impeller, designed using Mean stream line theory method and the Free vortex method. The materials used for the comparison were Stainless steel, Titanium alloy, and Copper alloy. The stress analysis had been carried out in ANSYS 14.0. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.