Flow and Loss Mechanisms in Volutes of Centrifugal Pumps

These lecture notes provide an overview of the different inlet and outlet volutes for radial impellers. It describes the advantages and disadvantages of the different geometries, the relation between flow and geometry, the impact on the downstream or upstream impeller, the loss mechanisms and some loss prediction models. The main purpose is to provide an insight into the flow structure that can be used later to improve the performance or remediate some problems. The use of CFD is not discussed but the flow models presented here may help to get a better understanding of the CFD output. Presented during the AVT-143 RTO AVT/VKI Lecture Series held at the von Karman Institute, Rhode St. Genese, Belgium, 20-23 March 2006. Published in Design and Analysis of High Speed Pumps, Educational Notes RTO-EN-AVT-143, Paper 12. ISBN 92-837-0063-5 and ISBN 978-92-837-0063-0. See also ADM002051. The original document contains color images.