PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF TURBULENCE MODELS FOR FLOW SIMULATION OF DOUBLE SUCTION CENTRIFUGAL PUMP

The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a cost-effective tool for derivation of performance characteristics of pumps. The turbulent flow comprises the long range of turbulence scales and this needs very fine grid. Turbulence models are used to capture the effect of turbulence and hence play vital role on accuracy of flow simulation. The selection of turbulence model requires understanding of physics of flow domain and validation with experimental results. In present work, the numerical flow simulation of double suction horizontal split case centrifugal pump has been done at different operating points to derive the performance and flow characteristics of pump. The numerically derived performance characteristics are compared with characteristics obtained from physical pump test to select the turbulence model best suited for these types of pumps. It is seen that head, total loss and efficiency at duty point obtained by κ?ε turbulence model bears close comparison to experimental values.