The flow inside the volute of a centrifugal pump is three dimensional and depending upon the position of the inlet relative to the cross section center line, single or double swirling flow occurs. The purpose of the present study is the calculation of the 3D swirling flow inside the centrifugal pump volute. The developed flow solver provide detailed pressure and velocity distribution information inside the volute and the calculated results are verified by means of the experimental results presented in the literature. Three dimensional continuity and momentum equations are solved by means of an artificial compressibility technique. Finite volume approach is applied for the space discretization and explicit fourth order modified Runge-Kutta scheme is employed used for time discretizetion. Calculations are performed at three different mass flows one of which corresponds to the design point mass flow. The calculated volute flow conditions; namely the variation of the static pressure, total pressure, through flow and swirling component of the flow velocity over the cross sections which are located at different circumferential positions are compared with the experimental data in detail, which exhibit a good agreement with the measured flow field.
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