Numerical investigation of the effects of splitter blades on the cavitation performance of a centrifugal pump

For the centrifugal pump, additional splitter blades are sometimes necessary in order to improve the head and efficiency. On the other hand, the additional splitter blades will have effect on the cavitation performance due to the changes at the impeller inlet channel. In order to investigate this influence, three impeller schemes were proposed based on a model pump IS50-32-160, one without splitter blades and another two with splitter blades of different inlet diameters. Numerical simulations were carried out to investigate the characteristics of internal flow and the pump cavitation performances at different NPSHA with the CFD technique. The results show that the additional splitter blades will have some positive effect on the pump cavitation performance if the inlet diameter of the splitter blade is properly selected. The reason behind such improvement is that it helps to avoid the flow blocking at the impeller inlet and the vortex cavitation inside the blade passages effectively. For the pump model under our investigation, the cavitation performance reaches its best when the inlet diameter of the splitter blade is 0.725D(2).