Alexandria Engineering Journal (2019) xxx, xxx–xxx

H O S T E D BY
Alexandria University

Alexandria Engineering Journal

www.elsevier.com/locate/aej
www.sciencedirect.com

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Effect of impeller blades number on the

performance of a centrifugal pump
Gamal R.H. Abo Elyamin a,*, Magdy A. Bassily a, Khalil Y. Khalil a,
Mohamed Sh. Gomaa b

a
Department of Mechanical Power Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Minia University, Minia, Egypt
b
Beni-suef University, Beni-suef, Egypt

Received 11 August 2018; revised 10 December 2018; accepted 16 February 2019

KEYWORDS Abstract A numerical investigation is carried out on a centrifugal pump to show the effect of the
Centrifugal pump; impeller blades number on the pump performance. Three different impellers with 5, 7, and 9 blades
Blade number; are tested numerically to determine the optimum blades number at rotational speed of 2800 rpm.
CFD; Fluent 6.3.1 CFD commercial code is used to perform this work. It is found that the head coefficient
Impeller losses; ‘Wyt’ and the efficiency ‘ghyd’ are higher for the case of the impeller with 7 blades than that for the
Mixing losses two cases of 5 and 9 blades. The losses decrease by increasing the blades number due to the reduc-
tion of the secondary flow for a certain limit.
Then it increases again because the friction losses in the impeller and the mixing losses after the
impeller yield an increment in the total losses in the region of the vaneless diffuser. This could be a
result of the increasing number of the impeller channels.
Ó 2019 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria
University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction As an attempt to improve the numerical calculation method

and performance prediction for centrifugal pump Minggao
Centrifugal pumps have been used in industrial and domestic et al. [1] simulated six centrifugal pump models at design flow
applications, such as steam power plants, water supply plants, rate and off design flow rates under different specific speeds.
sewage, drainage or irrigation, oil refineries, hydraulic power Fluent solver with standard j-e turbulence model and Simplec
services and ships. Due to the rotation of the impeller, the fluid algorithm was chosen to perform the simulation. Steady flow
is drawn at the inlet to the pump, continuous lifting of fluid and moving reference frame was used to consider the impeller
takes place from source to the pump while passing through volute interaction.
the impeller the fluid takes the energy from vanes in form of The head and efficiency of the six models at different flow
kinetic energy and pressure. rates were compared with the experimental ones. It is con-
cluded that the Fluent simulation results were feasible and
* Corresponding author. accurate to predict the performance of centrifugal pumps as
E-mail address: gamalrabeh@mu.edu.eg (G.R.H. Abo Elyamin). the deviation of the predicted head and efficiency were less
Peer review under responsibility of Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria than 5%.
University.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2019.02.004
1110-0168 Ó 2019 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Please cite this article in press as: G.R.H. Abo Elyamin et al., Effect of impeller blades number on the performance of a centrifugal pump, Alexandria Eng. J. (2019),
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2019.02.004
2 G.R.H. Abo Elyamin et al.
Nomenclature
b1 width at the impeller inlet (mm)
b2 width at the exit of the impeller (mm)
cm meridional velocity component (m/s)
cu peripheral velocity component (m/s)
D1 diameter at the inlet of the impeller (mm)
D2 diameter at the exit of the impeller (mm)
h static enthalpy (J/kg)
Hth theoretical head (m)
K turbulence kinetic energy (J/kg)
L turbulence length scale (m)
Lf flow Losses (J/kg)
p static pressure (N/m2)
p1total ; p2total total pressure at the impeller inlet and exit
(N/m2 )
RI, RII, RIII, RIV diffuser segments radii (mm)
s specific entropy (J/kg
K)
T static temperature (K)
The effect of blade number on flow field and characteristics
of a centrifugal pump was investigated by Houlin et al. [2] the
model pump had a design specific speed of 92.7 and an impel-
ler with 5 blades, the blade number is varied to 4,6,7 with the
same casing and other geometric parameters. Fluent solver was
used to simulate and predict the flow field. They concluded
that the blade number had a significant effect on the area of
low pressure region behind the blade inlet. With increasing
the blade number the head increased but there were an opti-
mum number of blades for each one.
The effect of impeller blades number on the centrifugal
pump efficiency was studied by Jafarzadeh et al. [3] using com-
mercial CFD code. Three different turbulence models; stan-
dard k-e, RNG-k-e and RSM were applied to solve the flow
field for blades number of 5, 6 and 7. The results concluded
that the best head coefficient reached at the case of 7 blades.
Numerical and experimental investigations were carried out
by Coutier-Delgosha et al. [4]. A test pump with an impeller of
2-D curvature blade geometries in a cavitating and non cavi-
tating conditions was tested. The impeller had five single
curved blades with two different radii at inlet and outlet. From
the obtained results it was concluded that the calculations were
in good agreement with experimental measurements and the
model was able to simulate the complex three-dimensional
development of cavitation in rotating machinery and the asso-
ciated effects on the pump performance.
A numerical investigation of a centrifugal pump with differ-
ent impeller blade number was performed by Chakraborty
et al. [5]. Different rotational speeds of 2900, 3300 and
3700 rpm were applied for a centrifugal pump of different
impeller blade numbers of 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12. A
CFD commercial code was used and the results indicated that
the efficiency of the centrifugal pump varies with the blades
number. The efficiency and head coefficient increased as the
speed of rotation increased. Also the head coefficient increased
with the increase of number of blades but the maximum effi-
ciency achieved for the impeller of 10 blades.
A three-dimensional flow simulation was achieved numeri-
cally for a centrifugal pump by Shojaeefard et al. [6] to analyze
Please cite this article in press as: G.R.H. Abo Elyamin et al., Effect of impeller blades number on the performance of a centrifugal pump, Alexandria Eng. J. (2019),
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2019.02.004
Tu turbulence intensity, %
u1, u2 impeller peripheral speed at inlet and exit (m/s)
w specific work (J/kg)
y static flow work (J/kg)
yt total flow work (J/kg)
Z number of blades
Greek symbols
ghyd hydraulic efficiency, %
q density of working medium (kg/m3)
e turbulence eddy dissipation
wht loading coefficient
wyt total pressure coefficient
u2 discharge coefficient
b1, b2 inlet and outlet blade angles, °
Dht change in total enthalpy (J/kg)
Dr gap clearance (mm)
the pump performance some geometric characteristics such as
outlet angle and impeller passage width were changed. Accept-
able agreement has been showed from the numerical and
experimental results. Modifying the original pump outlet angle
to be 30° and the passage width to be 21 mm improved the
pump head and efficiency due to the reduction of losses result-
ing from the generation of vortices in the passage and impeller
outlet.
For two different impellers of the same number of blades (7
blades) and same casing but different diameters (70 mm and
105 mm outlet diameter) Meakhail et al. [7] carried out exper-
imental and numerical studies. The numerical simulation was
achieved using CFX-Tascflow commercial code. The results
indicated that the smaller diameter impeller developed higher
flow rate. Pressure distribution for small impeller is more uni-
form in the volute part. At high flow rate there is no flow sep-
aration for both pumps in the plane at mid-span and the flow
separation appears when the flow rate decreased.
To study the effect of blade tongue interaction Stickland
et al. [8] performed an experimental study. The pressure field
in the volute was analyzed by means of pressure measurements
at different locations inside the volute for different flow rates.
The results showed that the flow rate was the main reason for
pressure fluctuations in the volute. An increase in the pressure
amplitude resulted from reducing the tongue gap of the
impeller.
From this review the effect of changing the number of
impeller blades on the performance of a small scale centrifugal
pump is studied with respect to the secondary losses, friction
losses, and mixing losses.
2. Studied pump
A small pump [7] with simple geometry is used in the present
study (Fig. 1) to clarify the effect of changing the number of
blades. The impeller main specifications are given in Table 1.
The gap clearance between the impeller and the volute,
Dr = 7.5 mm and width b = 6 mm, is considered as vaneless
diffuser.
Effect of impeller blades number on the performance 3

Fig. 1 View of the selected pump with main dimensions.

speed computer. CFD uses numerical approaches to solve the

Table 1 Impeller specifications.
nonlinear differential equations which describe fluid flow for
Parameter Value certain geometries and boundary conditions. The main advan-
Number of blades (Z) 5, 7, 9 tage of CFD is that it is a modeling technique which enables
Inlet diameter (D1) 45 mm engineers to evaluate the performance of a wide range of sys-
Outlet diameter (D2) 105 mm tem configurations on computers with less time consumption
Inlet blade width (b1) 6 mm [9].
Outlet blade width (b2) 6 mm To simulate the inner flow field of the studied centrifugal
Inlet blade angle (b1) 26° pump under steady condition the commercial CFD software
Outlet blade angle (b2) 22° Fluent [10] with standard k-e and standard RNG k-e turbu-
lence model and SIMPLE algorithm were applied to solve
the Reynolds Average Navier-Stokes equations. The simula-
The volute of the numerically studied centrifugal pump has tion of steady and moving reference frames was applied
a rectangular shape with constant width 22 mm and consists of between impeller and volute casing. Convergence precisions
four circular segments with different radii (Fig. 1): of residuals 104 are shown in Fig. 2. The simulation details
RI = 66.28 mm, RII = 66.28 mm, RIII = 78.19 mm, are given in Table 2.
RIV = 84.01 mm.
3.1. Grid generation
3. Numerical analysis
The pump is divided into four regions, inducer, impeller, vane-
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is one of the Techniques less diffuser, and volute. The inducer, vaneless diffuser and
of numerical solutions of governing equations and using high- volute are stationary and the impeller is rotating with a rota-

Fig. 2 Scaled residuals for steady flow calculations.

Please cite this article in press as: G.R.H. Abo Elyamin et al., Effect of impeller blades number on the performance of a centrifugal pump, Alexandria Eng. J. (2019),
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2019.02.004
4 G.R.H. Abo Elyamin et al.

Table 2 Simulation details.

Parameter Fluent 6.3. Software
Fluid Water
Mesh Mixture of structured and
unstructured
Inlet Mass flow rate (kg/s)
Outlet Exit pressure (pa)
Wall No slip
Turbulence model k-e, RNG k-e
Impeller Moving Reference Frame (MRF)
Turbulence intensity, Tu 5%
Solution of Navier-Stokes SIMPLE algorithm
Equation
Maximum residual 104
convergence

tional speed of 2800 rpm. Gambit [11] has been used to gener-
ate the geometry and a mixture of unstructured and structured
meshes for the different regions. A mesh dependency study was
carried out to reach the suitable number of cells at which the Fig. 4 Grid generated for the pump with seven blades.
accurate solution is obtained. The mesh that has a small influ-
ence on the numerical results has been investigated, taking into
consideration the computer capacity and time of calculations. to the absolute one. Non-slip boundary conditions have been
To ensure that the numerical solution is independent on the adopted over the walls and impeller blades. The operating con-
number of cells generated for the different regions of the impel- ditions for the different cases of pump are shown in Table 3.
ler, different meshes are generated; coarse mesh, intermediate, The computations in the present work are carried out for fully
and fine one. Therefore, different grids with different cell num- turbulent model with Tu = 0.05 and L = 0.005.
ber of (545,164, 1,770,466 and 1,990,859 cells) are examined.
The solution started with the coarse mesh and is refined grad- 3.3. Turbulence model
ually by increasing the number of cells until unchanged result
is obtained then any increase of cell number has a slight or no It is required to select an efficient turbulence model for calcu-
effect on the results. Fig. 3 shows that a small difference in the lating the complicated flow through the pump. Two well-
head coefficient between the grid no.2 (cells, 1,770,466) and known turbulence models, standard k-e and RNG k-e, are uti-
grid no.3 (1,990,859 cells) occurred. Accordingly, mesh no. 2 lized and the results are compared with experimental ones for
is used in the present work. A sample of the generated grid the case of using impeller with 7 blades. Fig. 5 shows the cal-
for investigated cases of 7 blades is shown in Fig. 4. culated dimensionless characteristic curve of the pump using
the two turbulence models compared with corresponding
3.2. Operating conditions experimental values in [8]. The loading coefficient, the total
pressure coefficient, and the discharge coefficient are defined
The given boundary conditions are the volume flow rate and as follows [12]:
the outlet pressure at the inlet and outlet, respectively. The Applying the Euler turbine formula
walls are treated as stationary walls, except impeller walls w ¼ u2 cu2  u1 c u1 Euler turbine formula ð1Þ
are rotational. An interface between the stationary and rota-
tional regions was set apart from the rotating regions by In our case the flow enters the pump without swirl, which
2 mm to enable the transformation from the relative system means that the inlet peripheral component equal zero. Apply-
ing the thermodynamics first law in case of adiabatic condition
2
the specific work will equal the change in the total enthalpy.
Dividing the equation by the peripheral kinetic energy at
1.6
the impeller exit we get:
Loading coefficient (total enthalpy coefficient)
Head coefficient (Ψyt)

K- ε 545164
1.2
K- ε 1770466

0.8 K- ε 1990859
Table 3 Operating conditions.
0.4 Pump operating conditions
High Med Low Zero
0
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04
Flow Flow Flow Flow
Flow cefficient (Φ) m_ (kg/s) 1.0345 0.667 0.3846 0.00001
exit pressure ðPaÞ 111,325 141,325 1,611,325 176,325
Fig. 3 Effect of number of mesh cells on the numerical solution.

Please cite this article in press as: G.R.H. Abo Elyamin et al., Effect of impeller blades number on the performance of a centrifugal pump, Alexandria Eng. J. (2019),
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2019.02.004
Effect of impeller blades number on the performance 5

Head coefficient (Ψ ht) , Pressure coefficient

1.6

1.2 Sckland et al. exp

[8]
Ψ h t Sckland et
(Ψyt)
al. [8]
0.8 Ψht

Ψ y t K- ε
0.4

0
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12 0.14 0.16

Flow cefficient (Φ)

Fig. 5 Head coefficient and flow coefficient for the two turbulence models.

Dht Dht
Wht ¼ ð2Þ Wht ¼ ¼ total enthalpy coefficient ð9Þ
u22 =2 u22 =2
Using the relations of the exit velocity triangle, the loading The hydraulic efficiency can be defined from Gibbs equa-
coefficient is found to be a function only of the discharge coef- tion as the ratio between yt and Dht, it can be written as the
ficient and the exit blade angle ratio between the totalhead coefficient and the total enthalpy
Wht ¼ 2ð1 þ /2 cot b2 Þ ð3Þ coefficient:
Wyt
where ghy ¼ ð10Þ
Wht
Discharge coefficient,
cm2 It can be seen from Fig. 5 that the calculations with the tur-
/2 ¼ 2 ð4Þ bulence model j-eRNG gives more close results to the experi-
u2 =2
mental ones. Therefore, this turbulence model will be applied
Applying Gibbs equation: in the current calculations.
dp
T ds ¼ dh  ð5Þ
q 4. Results and discussions
Integrating Gibbs equation for adiabatic condition, the
flow losses (Lf) is obtained as: The numerical analysis has been carried out for the impeller
Z using different number of blades 5, 7 and 9. The original tested
dp pump has 7 blades therefore; the other two blades numbers (5,
Lf ¼ Dh  ¼ Dh  y
q 9) are taken in this study to show why the seven blades case is
    chosen. Changing the blade numbers conceders the effect of
Dc2 Dc2 changing the aspect ratio of the impeller channels on the flow
Lf ¼ Dh þ  yþ ð6Þ
2 2 mechanism and the building of the different sources of losses.
The two dimensional flow calculations [3] determine only the
Lf ¼ Dht  Dyt losses which are mainly caused by profile loss and a part of
Dividing by the peripheral kinetic energy at the impeller the mixing losses at exit. For a certain channel aspect ratio
exit we get; the generation of the secondary flow is hardly dependent.
For large aspect ratio, the flow could be considered as two
Lf Dht Dyt dimensional flows, as the generated two channel vortices and
¼ 
u22 =2 u22 =2 u22 =2 corner ones are weak and have low effect on the total mecha-
nism of the flow. For low aspect ratio the secondary flow
WL ¼ Wht  Wyt ð7Þ mechanism is very complicated and the development of the
where WL ¼ Loss coeffiecient two channel vortices and corner vortices are very strong and
may result in a new vortex system, Bassily et al. [13,14]
Dp
Dyt q
t
According to the aspect ratio value, the strength of the so-
Wyt ¼ ¼ 2 ¼ Total pressure coeffiecient ð8Þ
u2 =2 u2 =2
2 called jet/wake velocity distribution at the exit is determined,

Please cite this article in press as: G.R.H. Abo Elyamin et al., Effect of impeller blades number on the performance of a centrifugal pump, Alexandria Eng. J. (2019),
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2019.02.004
6 G.R.H. Abo Elyamin et al.
Bassily [15]. This makes the primary difference between the
two dimensional and the three dimensional simulations.
Increasing the number of blades has two major effects: firstly,
increasing the guidance of the flow and decreasing the slipping
and affects the mechanism of the secondary flow inside the
channel. The end effect of this results in the ‘‘jet/wake” velocity
distribution. Secondly, the increase of the blades will also
increase the blade friction losses (profile loss) and the mixing
losses. Increasing the number of impeller channels decreasing
the flow non-uniformity, issuing from the impeller in the rela-
tive system to the vaneless diffuser in the absolute system.
Although the increase of the blade channels increases the guid-
ance of the flow through the impeller and hence decreases the
chance of building the Jet/Wake distribution, it can cause the
increase in the profile losses. These two contradictions are
tested numerically to give the way of determining the optimum
number of blades, which gives the best guidance with mini-
mum friction, in comparison with the secondary flow and
the occurrence of energy stratification, which causes the build-
ing of Jet/Wake and strong mixing losses.
Fig. 6a indicates the effect of varying the number of blades
on the dimensionless characteristic curve of the pump and the
corresponding loss coefficient shown in Fig. 6b, if it is com-
pared with the total enthalpy coefficient (without loss). It
can be remarked that increasing the number of blades from
5 to 7 increases the total pressure coefficient remarkably, espe-
cially in the range of low discharge and this improvement is
less in the range of high discharge. This can be explained as
improving the secondary losses in the low discharge region,
but the effect of the friction at high discharge (velocity
increases) has more effect on the pump performance. These
effects are more obvious in case of using 9 blades. Increasing
the discharge decreases the losses for a certain limit after that
Ψht Ψyt 5blades Ψyt 7 blades Ψyt 9 blades
Pressure coefficient (Ψyt)
Head coefficient (Ψ ht) ,
2
1.5
1 the impeller and stator is the lowest for case of 7 blades
0.5
0 is minimum compared with the other two cases. Fig. 8c indi-
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04
Flow cefficient (Φ)
Fig. 6a Effect of number of blades on the performance in the
pump.
5 blades 7 blades 9 blades
Loss coefficient (Ψ Lt)
1.5
1 60
0.5
0 0
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04
Flow cefficient (Φ)
Fig. 6b Effect of blade number on loss coefficient for different
discharge coefficients.
Please cite this article in press as: G.R.H. Abo Elyamin et al., Effect of impeller blades number on the performance of a centrifugal pump, Alexandria Eng. J. (2019),
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2019.02.004
the friction overcomes this improvement and begins to increase
the losses obviously.
For the case of using 5 blades, the secondary flow increases
with increasing the discharge with low gradient and further
increase has a negligible effect on increasing the secondary
losses. In contrast, in case of using 7 blades the increase of
discharge leads to decrease in loss coefficient which means that
the development of decreasing the secondary flow overcomes
the increase in the friction loss and results in a decrease in
the loss coefficient.
From this figure it can be concluded that the optimum case
is using 7 blades. This can be also seen in Fig. 6c.The efficiency
for the case of 7 blades gives almost a constant value in the
studied range of flow coefficient, but for the case of 5 blades
has almost a constant gradient. For the case of 9 blades, the
efficiency is almost constant for low and moderate discharge
but it begins to decrease sharply at high discharge coefficient.
Detailed explanation of changing the behavior of the flow
through the radial pump due to changing the number of blades
can be seen from the velocity vectors, velocity contours, and
total pressure distribution along the midspan plane of the
radial pump.
It can be clearly seen from Fig. 7 the effect of the impeller
blade number on the Jet/Wake formation and the mixing
losses. Fig. 7a, shows the case of using low number of blades
and hence increasing the pitch ratio which enables the energy
stratification inside the channel and the formation of the Jet/
Wake at the channel exit. This is the reason of increasing the
secondary flow losses and the sharp non uniformity in the flow
at the exit and hence increasing the losses, in spite of decreas-
ing the friction losses of blade. Fig. 7b (7 blades) indicates the
balance between the decrease of the energy stratification and
the formation of the Jet/Wake distribution and the increase
in the blade friction loss.
In contrast, Fig. 7c (9 blades) shows clearly the increase in
the mixing losses at exit (red color), specially the side near the
tongue.
Figs. 8 and 9 confirm the results obtained from Fig. 7.
From Fig. 8 it can be seen that the velocity gradient between
(Fig. 8b) which means that Carnot loss (sudden enlargement)
cates high velocity level near the blades which means increas-
ing the friction losses. Also high gradient is remarked
between the velocity at impeller exit and vaneless diffuser inlet
which means also increasing the mixing losses.
5 blades 7 blades 9 blades
Hydraulic efficiency ( hy)
100
80
40
20
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04
Flow cefficient (Φ)
Fig. 6c Effect of blade number on the hydraulic efficiency for
different flow coefficients.
Effect of impeller blades number on the performance 7

Fig. 7 Velocity vectors at u = 0.023 for: (a) case of 5 blades; (b) case of 7 blades; (c) case of 9 blades.

The total pressure distribution Fig. 9a–c show regions
with very low values in the volute for case of 9 blades
(Fig. 9c) and also in case of 5 blades (Fig. 9a) at limited loca-
tion with lower values with respect to the case of 7 blades
(Fig. 9b) which almost gives uniform total pressure distribu-
tion inside the volute. This can explain the order of loss
occurrence in the three cases which reflects the level of the
loss as follows; case of 7 blades is the best then case of 5
blades and case of 9 blades became at the end as the worst
case.

Please cite this article in press as: G.R.H. Abo Elyamin et al., Effect of impeller blades number on the performance of a centrifugal pump, Alexandria Eng. J. (2019),
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2019.02.004
8 G.R.H. Abo Elyamin et al.

Fig. 8 Velocity contours at u = 0.023 at midspan for: (a) case of 5 blades; (b) case of 7 blades; (c) case of 9 blades.

5. Conclusion
A numerically study using a CFD tool was carried out to
investigate the effect of using different blades number in a cen-
trifugal water pump. A comparison between the numerical
result and a similar measured case gives a good agreement in
case of using K-e RNG turbulence model.
The studied cases show the effect of increasing the blade num-
ber on the flow mechanism in different regions of the pump,
impeller, guide vane, and volute. It was concluded that:
1. Increasing the blades number decreases the pitch ratio and
result in more guidance of the flow inside the channels with
lower tendency of building energy stratification and the for-
mation of the so called Jet/Wake.

Please cite this article in press as: G.R.H. Abo Elyamin et al., Effect of impeller blades number on the performance of a centrifugal pump, Alexandria Eng. J. (2019),
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2019.02.004
Effect of impeller blades number on the performance 9

Fig. 9 Total pressure contours at u = 0.023 at midspan for: (a) case of 5 blades; (b) case of 7 blades; (c) case of 9 blades.

2. Increasing the blades number increases the friction losses.
3. The main hydraulic losses occur in the centrifugal pump
can be divided into;
(a) Friction loss increases by increasing the blade sur-
face, especially in case of decelerating channels and
pressure gradient.
(b) Secondary loss caused by the channel vorticity and
the corresponding energy stratification, which can
cause the so called Jet/Wake distribution.
(c) The mixing losses which can be increased due to the
high non uniformity of the exiting flow in case of
low blades number and decreased with increasing

Please cite this article in press as: G.R.H. Abo Elyamin et al., Effect of impeller blades number on the performance of a centrifugal pump, Alexandria Eng. J. (2019),
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2019.02.004
10
the number of blades for a certain limit; then began
again to increase due to increasing the number of c-
hannels of the impeller.
It was found for the studied cases that the case of
using 7 blades is the best case, followed by the case of using
5 blades and at last the worst case was the case of using 9
blades.
References
[1] T. Minggao, Y. Shouqi, L. Houlin, W. Yong, Numerical
research on performance prediction for centrifugal pumps,
Chin. J. Mech. Eng. 23 (1) (2010) 21–26.
[2] L. Houlin, W. Yong, Y. Shouqi, T. Minggao, W. Kai, Effects of
blade number on characteristics of centrifugal pumps, Chin. J.
Mech. Eng. 23 (2010) 1–6.
[3] B. Jafarzadeh, A. Hajari, M.M. Alishahi, M.H. Akbari, The
flow simulation of a low-specific-speed high-speed centrifugal
pump, Appl. Math. Model. 35 (1) (2011) 242–249.
[4] O. Coutier-Delgosha, R. Fortes-Patella, J.L. Reboud, M.
Hofmann, B. Stoffel, Experimental and numerical studies in a
centrifugal pump with two-dimensional curved blades in
cavitating condition, J. Fluids Eng. Trans. ASME 125 (2003)
970–978.
[5] S. Chakraborty, K.M. Pandey, B. Roya, Numerical analysis on
effects of blade number variations on performance of centrifugal
pumps with various rotational speeds, Int. J. Curr. Eng.
Technol. 2 (1) (2012) 143–152.
[6] M.H. Shojaeefard, M. Tahani, M.B. Ehghaghi, M.A. Fallahian,
M. Beglari, Numerical study of the effects of some geometric
Please cite this article in press as: G.R.H. Abo Elyamin et al., Effect of impeller blades number on the performance of a centrifugal pump, Alexandria Eng. J. (2019),
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2019.02.004
G.R.H. Abo Elyamin et al.
characteristics of a centrifugal pump impeller that pumps a
viscus fluid, Comput. Fluids 60 (2012) 61–70.
[7] T.A. Meakhail, M. Salem, I. Shafie, Steady and unsteady flow
inside a centrifugal pump for two different impellers, Int. J.
Energy Power Eng. 3 (2) (2014) 65–76.
[8] M.T. Stickland, T.J. Scanlon, J.L. Parrondo-Gayo, J.
Fernández-Francos, J. González-Pérez, L. Fernández-Arango,
An experimental study on the unsteady pressure distribution
around the impeller outlet of a centrifugal pump, Proceedings of
ASME FEDSM’00 ASME 2000 Fluids Engineering Division
Summer Meeting, Boston, Massachusetts, 2000.
[9] W.-G. Li, Impeller trimming of an industrial centrifugal viscous
oil pump, Int. J. Adv. Des. Manuf. Technol. 5 (1) (2011).
[10] Fluent, Fluent 6.3 User Guide, Fluent Inc., Lebanon, NH,
USA, 2005.
[11] Gambit, Gambit 2.1 User Guide, Fluent Inc., Lebanon, NH,
USA, 2005.
[12] H.E. Gallus (in German), Waerme-Kraft-und
Arbeitsmaschienen Vorlesungs umdruck: Grundlagen der
Turbomaschinen, vol. Teil: Turbomaschinen, RWTH Aachen
Universtaet Vorlesungs umdruck, Aachen, Germany, 1983.
[13] M. Bassily Hanna, K. Weskamp, Effect or pitch ratio on the
secondary flow generated in a very low aspect ratio rectilinear
turbine cascade, 5th International Conference of Fluid
Mechanics, ICFM5, Cairo, 1995.
[14] M. Bassily Hanna, K. Weskamp, Mechanism of vortices system
nad secondary flow generated in a very low aspect ratio
rectilinear turbine cascade, International Symposium
‘‘Turbomachinary research”, Aachen, Germany, 1996.
[15] M. Bassily Hanna, Ein Beitrag zur Berechnung der
Ausgleichvorgaenge hinter einem Radialverdichterlaufrad,
1983. 83-01 (in German).