Design and optimization of mixed flow pump impeller blades by varying semi-cone angle

The mixed flow pump is a cross between the axial and radial flow pump. These pumps are used in a large number of applications in modern fields. For the designing of these mixed flow pump impeller blades, a lot number of design parameters are needed to be considered which makes this a tedious task for which fundamentals of turbo-machinery and fluid mechanics are always prerequisites. The semi-cone angle of mixed flow pump impeller blade has a specified range of variations generally between 45o to 60o. From the literature review done related to this topic researchers have considered only a particular semi-cone angle and all the calculations are based on this very same semi-cone angle. By varying this semi-cone angle in the specified range, it can be verified if that affects the designing of the impeller blades for a mixed flow pump. Although a lot of methods are available for designing of mixed flow pump impeller blades like inverse time marching method, the pseudo-stream function method, Fourier expansion singularity method, free vortex method, mean stream line theory method etc. still the optimized design of the mixed flow pump impeller blade has been a cumbersome work. As stated above since all the available research works suggest or propose the blade designs with constant semi-cone angle, here the authors have designed the impeller blades by varying the semi-cone angle in a particular range with regular intervals for a Mixed-Flow pump. Henceforth several relevant impeller blade designs are obtained and optimization is carried out to obtain the optimized design (blade with optimal geometry) of impeller blade. (paper)