Computational Measurement of Various Metrics and Mode Shapes of a Polymer-Based Centrifugal Pump Impeller

The advent of new manufacturing techniques for impeller in centrifugal pumps is replacing conventional materials with newly developed materials. In the centrifugal pump, the impeller is the most essential and vulnerable component due to various forces acting on it during operation, which causes stress, strain, deformation, and vibration. The use of new materials reduces the weight of the impeller, increases its flexibility in design capability, is resistant to corrosion, is easy to fabricate, and provides outstanding fatigue strength. Also, the efficiency of the centrifugal pump increases, and it performs better at higher speeds. This work deals with the static and modal analysis of the impeller, made of two different polymer materials (viz., ABS [acrylonitrile butadiene styrene] and ABS polycarbonate [ABS PC]) to estimate their performance. Three-dimensional CAD model of monoblock centrifugal pump with impeller made of ABS and ABS PC is modeled and simulated with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) using SolidWorks®. Flow simulation software is used to get the pressure distribution for two speeds on the surface of the impeller blades. Static and modal analysis of the impellers made of ABS and ABS PC materials has been carried out to evaluate the stresses, strains, deformation, frequency, and deflection of the impellers. The results show that the stress varies near the inlet and outlet of the impeller blade and is less than its threshold limit at higher speed for both cases. By comparing the results of impellers made of ABS and ABS PC materials at different speeds, it is suggested that ABS PC is the best-suited material for the impeller design of a centrifugal pump.