Tesla Bladed Pump (Disc Bladed Pump) Preliminary Experimental Performance Analysis

A preliminary experimental work on a centrifugal pump model specifically designed to transport slurry and multiphase flows is presented. The impeller design corresponds to the so-called “Tesla Bladed Pump” adapted from an existing DiscflowTM pump design for the petroleum deep-sea application. The overall performance results of such a specific pump design are presented for different rotational speeds and discussed in relation to affinity laws coefficients. The results show that the performance of the tested disc pump strongly differs from the conventional centrifugal bladed pump. A one-dimensional approach using complete Euler relation is used to explain the differences in the present case. Moreover, it has been found that available results in open literatures do not correspond to the real optimum conditions, more detailed research work must be performed to get a better understanding on this kind of bladed disc pump.