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Original Article

Proc IMechE Part A:

J Power and Energy
Effect of the volute tongue profile 0(0) 1–11
! IMechE 2014
on the performance of a low specific Reprints and permissions:
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speed centrifugal pump DOI: 10.1177/0957650914562095

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Hamed Alemi, Seyyed Ahmad Nourbakhsh, Mehrdad Raisee

and Amir Farhad Najafi

Abstract
In this study, we investigated the effects of volute tongue geometry variation on the head, efficiency, and radial force of a
centrifugal pump. Numerical simulation modeling based on k  ! turbulence with automatic near wall treatments was
used to simulate the turbulent flow. The effect of blade position with respect to the volute tongue on instantaneous
pump characteristics was investigated. The parametric studies were done for cutwater gap, tongue shape, and volute
tongue angle. Numerical results showed that the large cutwater gap caused lower radial force, especially at high flow
rates. Investigations using various volute tongue shapes indicated that the short tongue volute decreased the radial force
at design and low flow rates. Considering all aspects, the most satisfactory volute tongue angle was found to be 5 less
than the outlet velocity angle of the impeller; yielding about 40% lower radial force than others at the design point.

Keywords
Pump, volute, low specific speed, computational fluid dynamics, radial force, cutwater gap, tongue

Date received: 22 March 2014; accepted: 23 October 2014

using the standard k  " turbulence model. Spence

Introduction and Amaral-Teixeira3 studied the effects of four geo-
The circumferential pressure distribution around the metric parameters (cutwater gap, vane arrangement,
impeller periphery is ideally uniform at design condi- snubber gap, and side wall clearance) on pressure pul-
tion. However, when a pump is operating at off-design sation within a complete double entry, double volute
conditions, impeller out-flow does not match the centrifugal pump using multi-block, structured grid,
volute geometry resulting in a nonuniform angular and TASCflow CFD code. Based on their findings,
pressure distribution, inducing radial force. Large Spence and Amaral-Teixeira recommended proper
radial force is problematic for pumps, causing noise values for all parameters to reduce pressure fluctu-
and vibration, and exerting extra load on the bear- ation and radial force. Their results showed that the
ings. To address this, several studies have investigated cutwater gap increment from 4% to 8% in impeller
the effects of geometrical parameters on radial force in diameter reduces pressure fluctuation by about 30%.
centrifugal pumps. Using commercial software Guo et al.4 studied impeller volute interaction in a
(FLUENT 5), Eduardo et al.1 analyzed the effect of centrifugal pump equipped with variable tongue pro-
blade position relative to volute tongue on pressure files using the SST turbulence model and CFX-10
fluctuation due to impeller–volute interaction; results software. They observed that when the profile changes
showed that the maximum amplitude of unsteady from sharp to middle, the high efficiency range can be
pressure at off-design conditions occurs at an angle
around 15 after tongue. To examine the effectiveness Hydraulic Machinery Research Institute, School of Mechanical
of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods at Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
capturing pressure pulsation for a wide range of flow
Corresponding author:
rates inside a centrifugal pump, Gonzalez et al.2 pre-
Hamed Alemi, Hydraulic Machinery Research Institute, School of
sented a comparison between numerical simulations Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran,
and experiments. The amplitude of the fluctuating Postal Code: 1439955961, Tehran, Iran.
pressure field was calculated by CFD simulation Email: [email protected]

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2 Proc IMechE Part A: J Power and Energy 0(0)

somewhat widened. Furthermore, they found that this effects of cutwater gap, and tongue shape and angle on
replacement shifts the maximum efficiency point the performance and radial force of low-Ns centrifugal
towards a higher flow rate. Although Guo et al. con- pumps.
cluded that all variations are only affected by tongue
profile replacement; it seems that the cutwater gaps
Main pump geometry
have not been set the same for all tongue shapes in
their study. Uchida et al.5 made measurements to The experimental measurement of Kelder et al.9 was
monitor radial force and pump characteristic curves used for CFD validation throughout this study. The
for different cutwater gaps and tongue shapes. investigated centrifugal pumps have a low-Ns of 21 r/
According to their report, pump characteristic and min and their design parameters are summarized in
radial force are greatly affected by tongue area size Table 1.
and tongue shape. In addition, the measured max- Experiments were performed at flow rates of
imum instantaneous radial force was in agreement 82.5%, 100%, and 112% of the design flow rate. An
with the Stepanoff equation.6 Performing experiments LDV measurement system was used for velocity meas-
and numerical simulations, Dong et al.7 showed that urements. Velocity and static pressure data were col-
radial force depends on the geometry of the region lected at the locations shown in Figure 1, with the
where the gap between impeller and volute is small, pressure tabs located at the shroud side, just outside
including both tongue shapes and blade-tongue gap. the impeller yet in volute at mid-height of the outer
More recently, Torabi and Nourbakhsh8 studied the wall. Further details of the pump configuration and
effects of volute geometrical factor variation on radial experimental methods can be found in Kelder et al.9
force. They observed that the gap between impeller We designed eight volutes (details discussed in next
and tongue severely affects the radial force. More spe- sections) to study the effects of volute tongue geom-
cifically, they found that a 6% reduction in the cut- etry on head, efficiency and radial force. Three
water gap increases the amplitude of the static
pressure variation by 50% around the impeller exit.
Kelder et al.9 studied turbulent flow in the volute of a Table 1. Main parameters of pump.
low specific speed pump close to the design point.
Parameter Value
Both experimental and numerical approaches
showed that, under this condition, the core flow Metric specific speed, Ns (r/min) 21
behaves like a potential flow (i.e. no boundary layer Nominal flow coefficient, n 0.15
separation occurs). Thus, they employed inviscid Nominal head coefficient, n 0.124
equations to solve flow field through the low-Ns Impeller exit diameter, d2 (mm) 640
pump. Impeller exit width, b2 (mm) 25
Due to the established importance of tongue geom-
Number of blades, Z 7
etry for pump performance, here we investigated the

Figure 1. (a) kelder volute geometry and locations of velocity and static pressure measurement; (b) volute cross-sectional
dimensions.

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Alemi et al. 3

geometrical parameters (shape, cutwater gap, and boundary condition effects on simulation of the
tongue angle) of volute tongue were considered. pump flow domain. Figure 2(b) shows the generated
grids for the pump impeller and volute. Due to com-
Numerical method and model plexity of geometry, the hexahedral (near walls) and
tetrahedral cells were used for inlet and outlet mod-
description
ules and tetrahedral cells were used for impeller and
Commercial software CFX-13.0 was used to solve the volute. Mesh clustering was applied close to some
full 3D Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes (3D- important regions, such as leading and trailing edge
RANS) equations for various working conditions. of the blades and the volute tongue where flow separ-
The solver was a 3D CFD code in which the gov- ation may occur (Figure 2(b)). During grid generation
erning equations are discretized using the finite-ele- process, orthogonal quality, aspect ratio, and skew-
ment-based finite volume method. Such a hybrid ness were assured to be in desirable range. For steady
CFD method is advantageous because of its geometric simulation the grids between the impeller and volute
flexibility (due to the finite element method) and in one hand, and suction pipe and impeller on the
retention of the conservation properties of the finite other hand, were conjoined by means of a frozen
volume method, which results in low numerical error rotor interface. In other words, for steady simulation,
in the case of nonsmooth grids.10 For space discret- impeller rotation was considered and the frame of ref-
ization, the second-order upwind scheme was applied. erence was changed but relative orientation of the
For grid generation the 3D models of impellers and components across the interface was fixed. Both two
volute were first generated, and then exported to com- frames of reference were connected in such a way that
mercial software. Water at 25 C was selected as the each of them had a fixed relative position throughout
working fluid. Mass flow rate with flow direction and the calculation. This was equivalent to taking a snap-
constant pressure were implemented for inlet and out- shot from the flow field in an instance of time.
let boundary conditions respectively. Spence and Moreover, general grid interface was employed
Amaral-Texeira10 reported that these boundary con- between the volute and discharge duct.
ditions cause rapid convergence. As shown in Figure 3, grid independency studies
It was found that by increasing the turbulent inten- were performed using various mesh sizes. We found
sity at inlet from 5% to 10% and viscosity ratio from that increasing the number of cells from 7  105 to
10 to 100, the predicted head changes less than 0.01%. 1  106 results in a 0.8% change in the predicted
Thus, turbulent intensity and viscosity ratio were set head. Further mesh refinement from 1  106 cells to
to 5% and 10%, respectively. The convergence cri- 1:9  106 cells decreases the head by about 0.7%.
teria for numerical simulation were set at maximum Since the predicted head did not show a strong sensi-
residuals of 1  104 . tivity to grid refinement, the numerical results can be
For mesh generation, the pump was divided into considered as grid independent. All the numerical
four components: (i) inlet duct, (ii) impeller, (iii) results were obtained using the 1  106 cell mesh.
volute, and (iv) outlet duct (Figure 2(a)). Straight Unsteady simulation was done just in main geom-
ducts at inlet and outlet were used to prevent etry using k  ! model at the design point and

Figure 2. (a) 3D models of total domain including: (i) inlet duct, (ii) impeller, (iii) volute, and (iv) outlet duct; (b) computational mesh
for the investigated pump.

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4 Proc IMechE Part A: J Power and Energy 0(0)

off-design conditions. The time step selected for use in Results

the transient analyses was 8:9  103 s, as this pro-
vided a blade rotation of 2 between iterations.
Validation of CFD results
Additional time steps were used to investigate the Numerical simulations of the present study were vali-
dependence of the numerical predictions. In particu- dated by comparing the predicted static pressure and
lar, the maximum residuals were reduced to a magni- velocity components with the experimental data of
tude below 103 . At least five impeller revolutions Kelder et al.9 at selected locations (Figure 1). In this
were required to achieve unsteady convergence, in paper, three well-known turbulence models were exam-
the sense that the flow variables became periodic. ined, namely, the standard k  ",11 the low-Re k  !,12
and the SST13,14 models. In Figure 4, pressure distribu-
tions obtained from three turbulence models are com-
pared with the experimental data of Kelder et al.9
Experimental and numerical results showed that
the static pressure distribution behaves differently
under various flow rate values. For the design flow
rate, the static pressure remains almost uniform
which leads to minimum radial force. At the off-
design conditions corresponding to the low capacity
=n ¼ 0:825, the static pressure increases with 
while an opposite trend is observed for =n ¼ 1:12:
At overload, the effective cross sections are small
for the flow. As a result, the volute acts like a conver-
gent nozzle and the pressure decreases. In contrast, at
low capacity, the effective cross sections are large for
the flow; accordingly, the volute acts like a divergent
Figure 3. Nondimensional head versus mesh size. nozzle and the pressure raises.

Figure 4. The pressure distributions around the impeller periphery.

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Alemi et al. 5

The undulating pressure distribution seen in CFD models returned similar results, consistent with the
predictions (Figure 4) is a result of impeller blades experimental data of Kelder et al.9 It should be
effect. It is seen that all three turbulence models give noted that discrepancies between computations and
comparable results in both design and off-design con- experimental data could be partly due to the uncer-
ditions. Despite the presence of local discrepancies tainties in measurements.
between CFD predictions and measurements, both Kelder et al.9 employed Euler equations in their
the level and trend of CFD results are in overall agree- numerical predictions and found reasonable agree-
ment with the measurements. In Figure 5, the pre- ment between computational and experimental data.
dicted radial and tangential velocity components However, level of agreement between the numerical
were compared with the experimental data of Kelder and experimental data reported here is better than
et al.9 Comparisons were made for three working con- that of Kelder.
ditions (=n ¼ 0:825, 1.0, and 1.12) along four tra- In Figure, 6 the predicted coefficients using
verses (A, D, F, and H) of the volute (Figure 1). three turbulent models with steady simulation and
Although, some discrepancies between turbulence just k  ! model with unsteady simulation were com-
models at =n ¼ 0:825 are seen here, all turbulence pared with experimental data for a wide range of flow

Figure 5. Comparison of predicted and measured nondimensional radial and circumferential velocities in the volute along different
traverses at =n ¼ 0.825, 1, and 1.12.

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6 Proc IMechE Part A: J Power and Energy 0(0)

Figure 6. Comparison of predicted head and radial force using various turbulence models with the experimental data.

Figure 7. Pump performance versus blade location.

coefficients, including the design point and off-design respect to the tongue at design condition. The results
conditions. Firstly, in steady simulations, although indicate that when tongue locations vary between
the k  " turbulence model returns more accurate two blades, the head magnitude, efficiency, and
results for the nondimensional head near the design radial forces will be altered by less than 2.5%,
point, the head predictions of the k  ! model at off- 1.5%, and 8%, respectively. However, for steady
design conditions are closer to the experimental data, simulation of present work, in all cases the tongue
especially at high flow rate (Figure 6(a)). The k  ! was similarly located in the mid-position of two
turbulence model returns radial force predictions in blades ( ¼ 25:7 Þ.
better agreement with experiments than other
models (Figure 6(b)). Secondly, as shown in
Figure 6, although unsteady simulation using k  !
Volutes with various tongues profiles
turbulence model yields the closest head coefficients The influence of various volute tongue profiles on the
to the measurement data, the estimated radial forces radial force and pump characteristics was
by unsteady simulation are more or less similar to investigated.
steady simulation. As the principal focus of the cur-
rent study is radial force prediction at off-design con- Cutwater gap. The radial gap between the leading edge
ditions the k  ! turbulence model with steady of the impeller blades and volute tongue is called the
simulation was employed for calculations. cutwater gap. This distance affects the interaction
between blade and tongue. Therefore, cutwater gap
could change the pump hydraulic behavior, especially
Impeller blade and volute tongue interaction
radial forces. It is expected that cutwater gap incre-
When the blade position relative to tongue ðÞ ment could decrease the radial force. To investigate
changes, pressure and velocity distribution in the this prediction, three volutes with different cutwater
volute vary due to interaction between the impeller gaps (equal to 3.2%, 5%, and 8.4% of the impeller
blade and volute tongue (i.e. pump characteristics radius) were designed. Volutes with maximum and
are instantaneous and unsteady). Figure 7 presents minimum cutwater gap are displayed in Figure 8
pump performance curves versus blade location with and numerical results for these volutes are shown in

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Alemi et al. 7

Figure 8. Volutes with maximum and minimum cutwater gap.

Figure 10. Four various tongue angles.

Figure 9. Effects of different cutwater gap on pump performance.

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8 Proc IMechE Part A: J Power and Energy 0(0)

Figure 11. Pump characteristics with different volute tongue angle.

Figure 9. It was observed that all three volutes have tongue angle of 1 , whereas the reverse condition
identical head and efficiency. As expected, large cut- occurs at a high flow rate. At design point, all
water gap generates lower radial force, especially at tongue angles produce more or less equal head and
design and high flow rate (Figure 9(c)). efficiency and the 1 volute tongue angle experiences
the least radial force. This observation is in good
Tongue angle. Volutes tongue angle (v ) (Figure 10) is agreement with Figure 12, which shows that the pres-
one of the principal geometrical parameters of a sure field is more uniform around the impeller with a
volute and can affect hydraulic performances of a 1 volute tongue angle at design condition, compared
pump. In order to avoid any shock and separation to other angles.
during volute design, the volute angle should be the-
oretically equal to the absolute angle of impeller out- Tongue shape. Three tongue shapes (short, middle, and
flow (2 ) at design conditions. In the present pump sharp) with different t (12 , 18 , and 22 ) were
test case, the absolute angle of impeller outlet velocity designed to study their influence on pump character-
at the design flow rate was obtained at about 6 . To istics (Figure 13). Numerical results of these volutes
investigate the effects of tongue angle variation on the are illustrated in Figure 14. Short tongue volutes pro-
pump performance, four volutes with various tongue duce lower radial force, especially at low capacity.
angles (1 , 6 , 11 , and 16 ) were designed (Figure 10). While all volute designs yield more or less the same
Numerical calculated results are demonstrated in head and efficiency, the volute with sharp tongue is
Figure 11. The volutes with tongue angle of 1 and slightly more efficient at off-design conditions.
16 give higher efficiency at low and high capacity
respectively. This observation might be expected as
the absolute angle of impeller outflow (2 ) at low cap-
Conclusion
acity decreases due to absolute velocity reduction. In this paper, the hydraulic characteristics of the cen-
This results in a better match between outflow and a trifugal pumps for various volute designs are

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Alemi et al. 9

Figure 12. Pressure contours in various tongue angles at design flow rate ðn Þ.

numerically investigated using CFX software. The

k  ! turbulence model with automatic near wall
treatments was chosen for analysis of a steady flow
through a low-Ns pump. Various volutes were
designed to study the influence of tongue geometrical
parameters on the head, efficiency, and radial force.
The volute with short tongue provides lower radial
force at lower capacity; however, the volute with
sharp tongue was more efficient at off-design con-
ditions. Changing the cutwater gap from 3.2% to
8.4% of the impeller radius does not result in any
significant change in head or efficiency of pump.
Nevertheless, the large cutwater gap has lower radial
forces, especially at design and high flow rate.
Studying the volute tongue angle variation at high
capacity showed that the most satisfactory perform-
ance belongs to the volute with a 16 tongue angle;
likely due to a better match with the impeller outflow.
The volutes with tongue angle of 1 give higher effi-
ciency at low flow rate and the least radial force at
Figure 13. Three volutes with various tongue profile. design condition.

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10 Proc IMechE Part A: J Power and Energy 0(0)

Figure 14. Pump characteristics with different volute tongue shape.

Acknowledgement 4. Guo P, Luo X, Lu J, et al. Numerical investigation on

The authors gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of impeller-volute interaction in a low specific speed centri-
Hydraulic Machinery Research Institute of Tehran fugal pump with tongue profile variation. In: Proceedings
University. of the 4th international symposium on fluid machinery and
fluid engineering, Beijing, China, 24–27 November 2008.
5. Uchida N, Inaichi K and Shirai T. Radial force on the
Conflict of interest
impeller of a centrifugal pump. Bull Jpn Soc Mech Eng
None declared. 1971; 14: 1106–1117.
6. Stepanoff AJ. Centrifugal and axial flow pumps. New
Funding York: John Wiley, 1957.
This research received no specific grant from any funding 7. Dong R, Chu S and Katz J. Effect of modification to
agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. tongue and impeller geometry on unsteady flow, pres-
sure fluctuation and noise in a centrifugal pump. ASME
J Turbomach 1997; 119: 506–515.
References 8. Torabi R and Nourbakhsh SA. Hydrodynamic design
1. Eduardo BM, Joaquin FF and Jose GP. Numerical flow of the volute of a centrifugal pump using CFD. In:
simulation a centrifugal pump with impeller-volute inter- Proceedings of ASME-JSME-KSME joint fluids engin-
action. In: Proceedings of ASME FEDSM200-11297. eering conference. Hamamatsu, Japan: ASME-JSME-
Boston, MA: ASME, 11–15 June 2000. KSME, 24–29 July 2011.
2. Gonzalez JJ, Fernandez J, Blanco E, et al. Numerical 9. Kelder JDH, Dijkers RJH, Vas Esch BPM, et al.
simulation of the dynamic effects due to impeller volute Experimental and theoretical study of the flow in the
interaction in a centrifugal pump. ASME J Fluids Eng volute of a low specific-speed pump. J Fluid Dyn Res
2002; 124: 348–355. 2001; 28: 267–280.
3. Spence R and Amaral-Texeira J. A CFD parametric 10. Spence R and Amaral-Texeira J. Investigation into
study of geometrical variations on the pressure pulsa- pressure pulsations in a centrifugal pump using numer-
tions and performance characteristics of centrifugal ical methods supported by industrial tests. Comput
pump. Comput Fluids 2009; 38: 1243–1257. Fluids 2008; 37: 690–704.

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11. Jones WP and Launder BE. The prediction of laminar- Q, Qn flow rate; normal or design flow rate
ization with a two equation model of turbulence. Int J (m3/s)
Heat Mass Transfer 1972; 15: 301–314. r4 volute inlet radius (mm)
12. Wilcox DC. Multiscale model for turbulent flows. In: ro radius of volute wall midline (mm)
AIAA 24th aerospace sciences meeting. Atlanta: AIAA,
r (r–r4)/(ro–r4) radial distance in volute,
1986.
nondimensional
13. Menter FR. Multiscale model for turbulent flows. In:
AIAA 24th fluid dynamics conference. Atlanta: AIAA, Re ð
d22 Þ= Reynolds number,
1993. nondimensional
14. Menter FR. Two-equation eddy-viscosity turbulence Tave: average pressure and viscous moment
models for engineering applications. AIAA J 1994; 32: on impeller (N.m)
1598–1606. u2 blade tip velocity (m/s)
Vr Vr =u2 , radial velocity, nondimensional
V V =u2 , circumferential velocity,
nondimensional
Appendix Z number of blades
Notation v tongue angle ( )
" dissipation rate (m2/s3)
b2 breadth of impeller at discharge (mm)
hyd: gQH=ðTave:
Þ, hydraulic efficiency
d2 outside diameter of impeller (mm)
(%)
Fr radial force (N)
 kinematic viscosity (m2/s)
Fr Fr =ð0:5u22 d2 b2 Þ, nondimensional
! specific dissipation

rate (1/s)
g gravity (m/s2)
, n Q=
d22 b2 , flow coefficient; flow coef-
H, Hn head; normal or design head (m)
ficient at design flow rate Qn,
k turbulent kinetic energy (m2/s2)
nondimensional
N rotation speed (r/min)
, n gH=ð
2 d2 Þ, head coefficient; head
Ns NQ0:5 H0:75 , metric specific speed
coefficient at design head rate Hn,
(r/min)
nondimensional
P static pressure (Pa)
 fluid density (kg/m3)
Pin inlet static pressure (Pa)
t angular position of tongue ( )
P ðP  Pin Þ=u22 , nondimensional

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