Applicability of Turbulence Models on Characteristics Prediction of Centrifugal Pumps

In order to research the applicability of turbulence model on characteristics prediction of centrifugal pumps at the design condition, standard k-ε turbulence model, k-ω turbulence model and SST turbulence model are selected, which are commonly used in the numerical prediction for head, efficiency and NPSHr of the centrifugal pumps. By using commercial code ANSYS CFX, the all three turbulent models are used to predict the characteristics of six centrifugal pumps with the different specific speeds at the design condition, which are varied from 34.3 to 260.5. The calculation results are compared with the experimental data, and the comparison indicates that all the prediction results obtained from different turbulence models are more or less different from the experimental data. The head and efficiency predicted by SST turbulence model and k-ω turbulence model are closer and they are all bigger than that predicted by k-ε turbulence model. For low specific speed centrifugal pumps, the head and efficiency predicted by SST model and the NPSHr predicted by k-ε turbulence model are more closer to the experimental values; while for the medium and high specific speed centrifugal pumps, the head and efficiency predicted by k-ε turbulence model are better than that predicted by other models. The k-ω turbulence model and k-ε turbulence model are the best choice to predict NPSHr of medium and high specific speed centrifugal pumps respectively.