Synchronous Channel Fuel Pump

In the current state of the art automotive fuel pumps there is only one channel on each side of the impeller. For high flow and pressure applications the size of such pumps becomes excessive. In order to reduce the size to a manageable level it may be necessary to have two or more channels on each side. But the problem with a multichannel pump is that the peak efficiency of each channel happens at a different operating point and the overall pump efficiency may not be that good. This problem can be overcome by synchronizing the channels.

In a synchronous pump the channel diameter and cross sectional area of channels are such that the peak efficiency happens at the same operating point and the overall pump efficiency is improved. In this paper we derive the governing equations for flow, pressure and efficiency and layout a methodology for synchronizing the channels.