Correlations for the prediction of the head curve of centrifugal pumps based on experimental data

Natália Argene Lovate Pereira Fleischfresser¹; Jorge Luiz Biazussi¹; Antonio Carlos Bannwart¹

¹ States University of Campinas - UNICAMP - Department of Petroleum Engineering - Campinas - SP

doi:10.20906/CPS/COB-2015-0496

Resumo

The hydraulic performance of centrifugal pumps depends on several hydraulic dimensions of the pump, but most of them are not easily accessible. Therefore, the pump's hydraulic performance always has to be informed by the pump manufacturer. However, in order to protect their intellectual property, manufacturers rarely share detailed information about the pump hydraulics with the public. As a consequence, pump users and researchers don't have access to all the data they possibly need. In literature, there are several proposed models that attempt to predict the hydraulic performance of centrifugal pumps. It is also possible to calculate a pump's performance with numerical simulation. However, the accuracy of such models is usually proportional to the number of necessary parameters, those of which may not be easily accessible. In this work, a simple approach available in literature, based on fluid dynamics principles, that predicts a pump's hydraulic performance with only a few accessible hydraulic dimensions, is validated with several experimental data. Eighty tests of different types of pumps, with a large range of specific speeds are considered. From this analysis, correlations among the coefficients of the model equation and the main hydraulic data of the pumps were proposed. Given all the assumptions and simplifications, the objective of this work is to present a method applicable to several pump types that easily provides a prediction of the whole head curve with reasonable error.

Palavras-chave: Centrifugal pumps; Hydraulic performance; Experimental validation; Head curve prediction