A study of axial flow pump impellers -effects of pump design parameters on its performance

Axial flow pumps are widely used in a wide range of applications. Although a different range of axial pump designs can be found, axial flow pumps are usually designed for high flow rate and low pressure applications. In this study, two different axial flow pump impellers with and without guide vanes are experimentally investigated. The impellers used in the experiments consist of three and four blades. Guide vanes have 7 vanes. Experimental set-up mainly includes axial pump, electrical drive motor, storage and calibration tanks and control system. Different impellers are attached to the pump and hence pump characteristics are obtained. As the result of investigation, it is found out that, by using guide vanes, and regaining the tangential velocity energy of pump, improves the total pump efficiency about 3%. Also, the maximum efficiency improvement is obtained by four-blade impeller.