Parametric numerical analysis for the optimal fluid dynamic design of a two blade solid handling centrifugal pump

Self-priming solid-handling centrifugal pumps are used in many industrial and civil applications for the transport of slurries and fluid with suspensions. This class of pumps has to undergo restrictive geometrical and structural constraints (reduced number of blades, device for the selfpriming, high mechanical resistance) which usually do not allow an optimal fluid dynamic design. This is mainly due to the fact that the usual methods of investigation for these pumps are either not reliable (one-dimensional and/or similarity analysis) or can require large time effort (experimental campaign). In this paper, a numerical integrated procedure developed for the study of two blades selfpriming solid-handling centrifugal pumps and performed by means of the CFX-Tascflow numerical code, has been carried out on a particular class of solid handling pumps. A number of variations of the blade geometry is considered and studied numerically. In particular, the effect of the leading edge profile and of different thickness distribution on the blade mean line is analysed, in terms of total performance variations, flow field features and profile pressure distributions