Enhanced Impeller Blade Design for Water Coolant Pump in IC Engines

This paper presents investigation study done on improvement in coolant pump hydraulic efficiency by proposing novel design of impeller blade for internal combustion engine. In typical coolant pump design, hydraulic efficiency plays a very important role in defining performance characteristics of coolant pump. Hydraulic efficiency is inversely proportional to drag imposed on impeller blades. In current investigation, coolant pump’s impeller blade design is optimized by taking inspiration from Biomimicry. Tubercles design is adopted on tip of impeller blades. Considerable literature study indicates tubercle design has never been tested in IC Engines in automotive industry. Design calculations along with CFD work has been carried out in order to adopt tubercles design on impeller blade tip. The virtual results are encouraging, with efficiency improvement in range of 1% to 4% by means of analytical & CFD calculations at coolant pump component level.

Though investigation is carried out on belt-driven/mechanical coolant pump in IC engine, it can also be implemented with necessary design changes with respect to new boundary conditions for coolant pump in other applications.