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Flow simulation in radial pump impellers and evaluation of slip factor

Article in Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Part A Journal of Power and Energy · July 2015
DOI: 10.1177/0957650915594953

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Original Article

Proc IMechE Part A:

J Power and Energy
Flow simulation in radial pump impellers 0(0) 1–10
! IMechE 2015

and evaluation of slip factor Reprints and permissions:

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DOI: 10.1177/0957650915594953
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Mohamed G Khalafallah, Hassan A Elsheshtawy, Abdel-Naby

M Ahmed and Ahmed I Abd El-Rahman

Abstract
This work is concerned with the study of the slip phenomenon in centrifugal pumps and the evaluation of its dependence
on the flow rate for a four-bladed pump. The finite volume method is used, and the impeller domain is represented by a
structured grid topology. The calculations assume a rotationally periodic boundary condition, while the frozen rotor
technique is used to model the interaction between the pump impeller and its surrounding volute casing. The simulation
uses an implicit time integration of the dynamic equations and is carried out using the commercial ANSYS CFX-solver.
Results from the simulation are found in reasonable agreement with the pump performance curve with a maximum
relative error of 4% in the range of flow coefficient from 0.8 to 1.2. The calculated values of the slip factor, as a function of
the flow rate, show good agreement with the Qiu’s mathematical model while retaining the default value of the defined
shape factor F ¼ 0.52. In this particular study, the results show that although the slip factor improves with the increase of
either the number of blades or splitter length, the corresponding predicted hydraulic efficiency decreases due to the
increasing friction loss.

Keywords
Centrifugal pumps, turbomachinery flow, pump performance/efficiency, slip behavior/factor

Date received: 16 December 2014; accepted: 5 June 2015

Introduction parameters, such as the number of blades and the

The slip phenomenon takes place in radial machines
as a result of the induced relative flow circulation, and
consequently, the fluid becomes unable to faithfully
follow the guiding blades. The slip factor is a measure
of such flow deviation and is defined in terms of the
exit whirl velocity. Slip leads the flow to leave
the impeller with a mean relative angle 2 less than
the blade exit angle 20 , as shown in Figure 1. This
results in a significant reduction in the work done on
the fluid, and consequently, the pump head is dramat-
ically influenced
Cu20 U2 U22 U2 Q
HE ¼ ¼  cot 20
g g gD2 b2
A pump theoretical head HE is typically represented
by the Euler equation (equation (1)), where all terms
except the flow rate Q are constant. Here, U2 is the
impeller peripheral speed, while D2 and b2 refer to the
impeller diameter and the passage width, respectively,
all measured at the exit section. However, due to slip
and other losses, the actual head and flow rate (H–Q)
characteristics exhibit a significant deviation from the
corresponding Euler behavior. Keeping that in mind,
the slip in radial impellers depends on various
blade geometry, and possibly varies with the pump
flow rate. Although increasing the number of blades
helps reduce the flow deviation in the impeller exit, it
also promotes blockage in the flow channels.
Therefore, a careful study on the effect of the
number of blades on the slip factor, as well as the
developed head and the pump efficiency is considered
in this work.
Stodola and Loewenstein1 was the first to develop a
mathematical expression for the slip factor in centri-
fugal pumps. He considered a circular control volume
filling the blade passage near the impeller exit and
assumed that the slip velocity is caused by the relative
ð1Þ eddy motion. He derived his equation for the slip vel-
ocity CSL in terms of the exit blade angle 20 and the
Department of The Mechanical Power Engineering, Cairo University,
Giza, Egypt
Corresponding author:
Ahmed I Abd El-Rahman, Department of The Mechanical Power
Engineering, Cairo University, Cairo University Rd., Giza 12613, Egypt.
Email: aiarahman@eng.cu.edu.eg

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2 Proc IMechE Part A: J Power and Energy 0(0)
Figure 1. The slip-influenced (solid lines) and the theoretical
blade-geometry (dashed lines) exit velocity triangles. CSL is the
slip velocity, considered by Stodola and Loewenstein1 in his
definition for the slip factor  ¼ 1  CSL =U2.
number of blades Z, as follows
 sin 20
CSL ¼ U2
Z tors modeled by Wiesner3 and Stodola and
Using the potential flow theory, Busemann2 devel-
oped a theoretical framework for the estimation of
the slip velocity and the calculation of the slip factor
for several blade angles and number of blades. His
results were plotted as a function of the inlet-to-
outlet radius ratio and indicated constant slip behav-
ior zone at small inlet-to-outlet radius ratios followed
by a sharp reduction in slip at higher values of the
inlet-to-outlet radius.
Later, Wiesner3 presented a general review of the
various prediction methods, developed for the calcu-
lation of basic slip factors, applicable for centrifugal
impellers. He concluded the first part of his work by
supporting the validity of the classical theoretical
method of Busemann.2 Furthermore, he carefully
explored the Busemann experimental results and pro-
posed the following simpler empirical expression for
slip factor estimation, while considering the impeller
exit velocity diagram, illustrated in Figure 1
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
sin 20
 ¼1
Z0:7
Although limited by the impeller inlet-to-outlet radius
ratio, Wiesner’s values showed a more accurate fit to
the Busemann test data. Wiesner then carried out
extensive comparisons of slip factors, with test data,
reported in the literature for more than 60 different
impeller geometries that further demonstrated its high
potential in describing the slip phenomenon. Thus,
Wiesner’s slip model is currently widely accepted for
centrifugal pump design.
Von Backström and Theodor4 derived a unified
correlation for the slip factor assuming a single rela-
tive eddy centered on the rotor axis in his fluid
dynamic model. He ignored other mechanisms
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affecting the slip phenomenon such as the blade turn-
ing angle and the flow-induced wakes, and proposed a
model to calculate the magnitude of the recirculating
flow caused by the relative eddy. He argued that the
eddy-induced slip velocity is dependent on the blade
solidity (c=s2 , where c and s2 correspond to the chord
and pitch at the blade exit, respectively) and defined
the slip factor in terms of the normalized slip velocity,
following the work of Wiesner,3 as introduced in
equation (4). In his trial to unify the previously
derived formulas for the slip factor, Backström com-
pared his results with other attempts to demonstrate
its feasible replacement; however, his model does not
show any dependence on the pump flow rate
 ¼ 1  1=½1 þ 5ðcos 20 Þ0:5 ðc=s2 Þ ð4Þ
Memardezfouli and Nourbakhsh5 experimentally stu-
died the slip factor in centrifugal pumps at different
flow rates. They compared their results using five dif-
ferent industrial pumps with the theoretical slip fac-
ð2Þ
Loewenstein.1 They found good agreement at the
pump best efficiency point (BEP), whereas a signifi-
cant divergence was found at off-design conditions,
specifically at low-flow rates operating regimes. They
further defined the local slip factor and illustrated its
nonuniform distribution in the blade-to-blade pas-
sage. A relative decrease in the local slip factor was
noticed, while moving across the streamlines from the
blade pressure side (PS) to the blade suction side (SS).
Although inconsistent, their values for the mean slip
factors at the impeller exit showed clear dependence
on the flow rates and the number of blades.
Further, Caridad and Kenyery6 carried out a 3D
computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation
using the commercial CFX-solver package on five dif-
ferent impellers of known geometries and specific
speeds. They were able to calculate the slip factor
for both single- and two-phase flow and found a simi-
lar linearly decreasing behavior for all slip curves with
the increase of the pump flow coefficient. The pre-
dicted slip factor was reported to decrease as the
gas-void fraction increases from 10 to 17%. They fur-
ð3Þ ther compared their slip results with values produced
by Wiesner3 and Stodola and Loewenstein1 correl-
ations and showed discrepancies as large as 52%.
Qiu et al.7 were the first to consider the influence of
the variable pump flow rate in their derivation for a
unified slip factor. Qiu et al. distinguished the mech-
anism controlling the flow behavior, and thus the slip
factor, within the impeller at the impeller exit into
three components. The first component represented
the radial ‘‘Coriolis’’ effect, evident for typical radial
impellers. The second contribution accounted for the
blade-turning rate (d=dm, where m represents the
meridional distance on the Z–R plane) characterizing
the extra loading from the streamline curvature, while
the third component described the weak effect of the
Khalafallah et al.
passage width variation on the back flow and wakes
generation (db=dm, where  is the flow density). Qiu
et al.7 defined the slip factor in terms of the slip vel-
ocity normalized by the rim rotor speed
 
F cos 2 sin 2 Fs2 2 d
 ¼1 
Z 4 cos 2 dm 2
 
F2 s2 sin 2 db
þ Another recent numerical attempt has been
42 b2 dm 2
Here, F,  2, and 2 refer to the shape factor, as defined
by Qiu et al.,7 the meridional inclination angle, and
the exit flow coefficient, respectively. Furthermore,
their model was validated for several case studies
including an industrial pump with an actual blade-
turning rate d=dm of 4.92 degrees/m. An adjustable
fitting parameter F ¼ 0.6 was needed to obtain a good
match with the test data. Qiu et al. also compared
their slip results with corresponding values, calculated
using other prediction methods, but specifically indi-
cated a close agreement with the Wiesner3 model.
Recently, a CFD simulation, using the commercial
software package of STAR-CD, of the flow field in
centrifugal compressors was reported by Huang et al.8
They considered the effect of the mass flow rate, the
blade exit angle 2, the blade wrap angle  (see Figure
2), and the number of blades Z. Considering the
Busemann mathematical model,2 they defined the
slip factor in terms of exit flow angle as
Cm2
 ¼ 1  ½ðtan 2  tan 20 Þ  ð6Þ
U2
For simulation and comparison purposes, they con-
sidered the geometry of Eckardt9 ‘‘rotor A’’ impeller.
(a)
Figure 2. The 2D schematic drawing (a) and the full 3D model (b) of the pump geometry.
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3
Huang et al. showed that the onset of slip occurs close
to the exit section at a normalized camberline distance
at which the deviation of the flow angle from the
blade angle begins to increase. The calculated total
pressure ratio and slip factor were successfully com-
pared to Eckardt9 results. Surprisingly, their slip
factor exhibited a slight rise with the increase of the
ð5Þ mass flow rate.
reported by Li10 who performed a CFD analysis of
the slip factor in a centrifugal pump. The slip factor
was calculated from the velocity triangles at the impel-
ler exit and from the impeller theoretical head. He
concluded that the numerical results from the two
methods were inconsistent. Also, the effect of flow
rate on the slip factor was dramatic for blades
having small exit angles, as expected, while the viscos-
ity had minimal effect on the slip factor.
To the best of our knowledge, no simulation has
been developed which provides accurate prediction of
the slip characteristics of a typical centrifugal pump
and shows plausible comparison with actual perform-
ance and empirical relations. The goal of the present
study is to develop a finite volume model which helps
to understand the flow behavior within the blade-to-
blade passage of the chosen centrifugal pump and
reveals the slip variation with the pump flow rate.
Also the study aims to verify the relation suggested
by Qiu et al.7 as the authors believe that their devel-
oped expression could predict the slip factor at differ-
ent flow rates reasonably well. A parametric study
about the effect of varying the number of blades and
splitters on both the slip behavior and the pump per-
formance is presented.
The next section elaborates the generation of the
pump geometry along with the meshing details. This is
(b)
4 Proc IMechE Part A: J Power and Energy 0(0)

followed by the ‘‘Setup of the numerical model’’ sec-
tion, in which the implementation of the periodic
boundary condition is first introduced. This section
also presents the model validation by comparing the
numerical values with the corresponding pump char-
acteristic curve. In the ‘‘Results’’ section, an illustra-
tion of the predicted flow field is presented, followed
by the slip factor evaluation and comparison with dif-
ferent mathematical models. The dependence of the
slip factor and the pump’s hydraulic efficiency on
the number of blades and splitter blades is finally
considered.
Pump geometry and domain meshing
In this study, an industrial centrifugal pump with four
blades is chosen for computational modeling and
simulation purposes. To replicate the pump geometry,
the CFturbo11 software is used to draw the contours
of both the impeller blade and the volute casing. The
impeller blade assumes a shape of a fourth-order poly-
nomial profile that leads to an exit blade angle 2 of
17.5 and inlet blade angle 1 of 20.0 , measured with
respect to the tangential direction. Here, the angles 
and  are measured with respect to the radial direc-
tion, as illustrated in Figure 2(a). The volute has a
tongue angle  of 29 and an inner diameter D3 of
397 mm, approximately. The main dimensions of the
pump geometry are summarized in Table 1.
The impeller and volute data are then passed to the
ANSYS BladeGen12 software, to produce the 3D
model of the centrifugal pump, as shown in
Table 1. The pump main dimensions (mm, degrees).
D1 D2 D3 b2  
177 360 397 29.5 124
Figure 2(b). The used splitters have three different
lengths of 30, 50, and 70% of the full-blade chord.
The ANSYS Turbogrid13 program is used to generate
the 3D finite-volume hexahedral elements for accurate
and fast CFD analysis of the flow behavior within the
radial impeller. On the other hand, an unstructured
mesh is applied to the volute computational domain,
as shown in Figure 3(a). The general grid interface is
used to couple the structured impeller grid and
unstructured volute grid while the frame change
frozen rotor model is used to model the rotor rotating
domain relative to the stator stationary domain, as
described in detail in the ANSYS CFX14 User
Documentation.
In this work, the entire domain is first considered
for validation purpose by including the volute effect in
the simulation to allow comparison of the H–Q char-
acteristics. The study then proceeds to predict the slip
behavior within the impeller passage and at the impel-
ler exit. For this objective, it is unreasonable to
numerically model the pump entire domain since it
contains a periodically repeating flow field between
each two successive blades, instead, a representative
control volume is considered and appropriate bound-
ary conditions are imposed at its boundaries, as indi-
cated in Figure 3(b). To ensure that the enclosed
domain behaves as a representative section of the
entire impeller, rotationally periodic boundary condi-
tions are enforced on the control volume surfaces in
the peripheral direction. This approach also helps to
reduce the computational effort.
Setup of the numerical model
In the present model, the atmospheric pressure is
imposed at the impeller inlet, while the outlet bound-
ary condition is set as a constant mass flow rate. The
29
no-slip boundary condition is applied at the impeller

Figure 3. (a) illustrates the impeller structured mesh versus the unstructured mesh of the volute casing, while plot (b) shows the
meshing and the imposed boundary conditions of the periodic domain of the impeller.

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Khalafallah et al.
and volute casing walls. A turbulence intensity of 5%
is imposed at the inlet section.
The present model solves the quasi-steady
Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations using
the two-equation k–e turbulence model and a coupled
solver. It is worth noting here that the k–e model does
not yield the best accuracy for cases when either stall
or reversed flow is present inside the domain.15 The
convergence criteria settings include the specification
of the maximum number of iterations to 1000 and the
residuals to 10–4, while the imbalances in the govern-
ing equations are set to less than 1%. The evolution of
the total pressure is also monitored as the simulation
proceeds to verify and record the attained steady-state
solution. The transient algorithm is employed with a
specified time increment of 60/N, where N refers to the
impeller’s number of revolutions per minute. Here,
N ¼ 1450 r/min.
Figure 4(a) shows the results of the grid independ-
ence study applied to the considered periodic domain.
It is clear that a grid size of 366,485 elements is suffi-
cient and is thus used in the rest of this study. This
simulation run is carried out at the pump’s BEP, at
which the actual flow rate and head are 260 m3/h and
38 m, respectively. Furthermore, to validate the
numerical model, the pump characteristic curve is pre-
dicted and compared with the available actual curve.
Computations are carried out using the k–e turbu-
lence model.
Figure 4(b) compares the present numerical results
of the H–Q curve with the corresponding actual
values. Here, both the pump head H and the pump
flow rate Q are normalized with respect to their values
at the BEP. Good agreement is found in the range of
normalized flow rate between 0.8 and 1.2 with a max-
imum relative error of 4%. However, in relatively
high and low flow rate regimes, the difference between
the numerical and test results increases up to about
13%. Such a discrepancy may be attributed to the
inability of the present CFD model to properly
account for the expected separated flow regimes,
under high heads, far from the design point and the
effect of leakage under high flow rates.
(a)
Figure 4. The pump head grid size dependence is presented in (a), while (b) refers to the model validation. The solid dots refer to
the present simulation results, while the solid line represents the pump characteristic curve.
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5
Results
In this section, the numerical slip results are presented
and compared with a few mathematical models, along
with a description of the flow behavior within the
impeller passage. In the following simulation runs,
spatial variations in the flow static pressures and
meridional velocities are presented, followed by a
detailed discussion of the effect of increasing the
number of blades and adding splitters on the evalu-
ated slip as a function of the pump flow rate.
Investigation of the flow field
Figure 5 shows the variation of both the meridional
velocity and the static head along the blade pitch at
three different radial locations, namely those corres-
ponding to 25, 50, and 81% of the passage radial
length. The results in Figure 5 refer to the mean
flow behavior (i.e. along a plane located midspan
between the hub and the shroud). Here, the four-
bladed impeller operates at its design condition.
With such low number of blades, the impeller-dis-
charged flow is expected to become nonuniform
over the blade pitch. Figure 5(b) shows that at the
25% section, the meridional velocity profile is nearly
parabolic along 2/3 of the blade pitch, measured from
the SS, but then deforms as the flow moves outward
to become strongly nonuniform over the blade pitch
at the impeller exit.
It is clear that in the stream-wise flow direction, the
velocity gradually decreases as the flow moves out-
ward because of the widening cross-sectional area of
the flow passage, while a corresponding increase in the
static head is indicated in Figure 5(d). The evolvement
of the recirculating flows nearby the leading edge on
top of the blade PS is shown in Figure 5(a). This is
typically generated because of the large blade-turning
rate that leads to boundary layer separation. The
influence of wakes on the meridional velocity is
observed along the remaining 1/3 of the blade pitch,
noting that it becomes less significant at the impeller
exit, as shown in Figure 5(b).
(b)
6 Proc IMechE Part A: J Power and Energy 0(0)

To help to illustrate the induced separation zone To further illustrate the significant effect of the pump
within the impeller passage, the velocity vectors are flow rate on the slip factor, Figure 7(a) shows the
plotted in Figure 6. The incoming flow is shown to variation of the slip factor with the exit flow coeffi-
separate closely at the leading edge on the blade PS. cient 2, in comparison with the Wiesner and Qiu
The portion occupied by the wakes increases to block et al. models. The present simulation shows a linear
about 30% of the blade pitch and then gradually reduction in the slip factor in the range of the flow
shrinks allowing the flow to eventually refill the coefficient from 0.075 to 0.105. Consistent results, but
entire domain. underpredicted by 11.6%, are estimated by the Qiu
et al. model in the same range of the exit flow coeffi-
cient. The effect of flow rate is represented by the third
Slip factor evaluation term of equation (5), in which the blade-turning rate
In the present study, a separate postprocessing
MatLab program is developed to calculate the slip
velocity using the data of the tangential and radial
velocity components (Cu2 and Cm2), together with
the relative exit blade angles 20 , according to equa-
tion (7). This is then followed by the direct estimation
of the slip factor at the impeller exit. A comparison
between the numerical slip result and available empir-
ical formulas, at the BEP, is shown in Table 2. The
mean slip factor at the impeller exit is calculated to be
0.58. The present result is seen to be in close agree-
ment with both the Wiesner3 and the Qiu et al.7
models. The adjustable parameter is selected to
equal 0.6, as suggested by Qiu et al. in their model

Cm2 Figure 6. The figure shows a contour plot of the flow abso-
CSL ¼ U2  Cu2  ð7Þ
tan 20 lute velocity, overlapped by the velocity vectors at BEP.

Figure 5. Contour plots of the meridional-velocity and the static-head distributions between two successive blades at three dif-
ferent radial locations. The normalized arc distance is the ratio of the circumferential distance to the local blade pitch. (a) Contours of
the meridional velocity, (b) meridional velocity profile, (c) contours of the static head, (d) static head profile.

Downloaded from pia.sagepub.com by guest on September 16, 2015

Khalafallah et al.
causes extra loadings due to streamline curvature. The
larger the amount of flow rate, the less controlled the
flow guidance and the smaller the slip factor. In this
particular run, the slip factor varies from 0.6 at
2 ¼ 0.075 to 0.41 at 2 ¼ 0.127. The similarity
between the present CFD results and the calculated
results according to the Qiu et al. model suggests that,
if the fitting parameter F in equation (5) is retained in
its default value 0.52 instead of 0.6, a better agreement
with Qiu’s prediction is achieved, as demonstrated in
Figure 7(a). Such validation has not been reported
before.
The local slip factor is calculated, using the local
velocity components Cu2i and Cm2i, and evaluated at
three different span locations over the blade pitch at
the impeller exit, namely the 0% span (hub), 50%
span, and 100% span (shroud). The variation of the
local slip factor as a function of the normalized arc
distance at the impeller exit is introduced in Figure
7(b). Consistent with our understanding of the flow
behavior near the solid boundaries, the local slip
factor exhibits a remarkable increase at the hub sec-
tion as compared to those values estimated at the
mean and shroud sections because of the blade load
distribution along with the secondary flow effect.
Moreover, the comparison reveals a relatively lower
slip factor at 100% spanwise position, corresponding
to the impeller top section. This is due to the fact that,
in our particular model, the pump is unshrouded. This
result supports our knowledge that a shrouded impel-
ler helps improving the slip characteristics and that an
unshrouded impeller induces a variation of the slip
factor with the flow rate.
Next, the number of blades is varied to study the
effect of their variation on the slip phenomenon, while
Table 2. The present slip factor versus reported correlations.
Z Stodola Backström
4 0.7638 0.7275
(a)
Figure 7. The figure shows the slip factor variation with the exit flow coefficient as compared to Wiesner and Qiu models (a) and
the change of the local slip factor over the blade pitch (b) at the impeller exit. Here, Z ¼ 4.
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7
retaining the original impeller geometry. Specifically,
impellers having six, eight, and 12 blades are con-
sidered. In principle, using more blades would result
in larger slip factors because of the improved guidance
the fluid experiences through the impeller. As antici-
pated, the present numerical result shows a remark-
able increase in the slip factor using more blades, as
indicated in Figure 8(a) and (b). Figure 8(b) shows
that as the number of blades increases the slip factor
asymptotically approaches a maximum of 0.69. It is
important to note that equation (5) defines the three
main factors affecting the slip in centrifugal impellers.
The contribution by the number of blades is obvious
in the second term of the right-hand side, thus, jus-
tifying the above effect of the number of blades on the
slip behavior.
Two different approaches were reported to enable
the investigation of the energy saving due to splitter
blades. Gölcü et al.16 considered standard impellers
having different numbers of main blades, fitted with
splitter blades having different lengths. The overall
number of blades (main and splitter) varies in their
results. In a recent study, Cavazzini et al.17 compared
the performance of centrifugal pump both with and
without splitters. In their work, the overall number of
blades (main and splitter) is preserved and set to eight.
Here, we pursue Cavazzini’s approach.
The usefulness of using splitters in a conventional
pump is demonstrated through the comparison pre-
sented in Figure 8(c). With respect to the performance
of the eight-bladed standard impeller, the present
CFD simulation captures a relative improvement in
the slip behavior through the replacement of full ori-
ginal blades with splitter blades having different
lengths. It is clear that as the splitter length is
Eckardt Qiu et al. Wiesner Present
0.8146 0.515 0.6288 0.58264
(b)
8 Proc IMechE Part A: J Power and Energy 0(0)

(a) (b)

(c)

Figure 8. The variation of the slip factor as a function of the pump flow rate using a different number of blades is shown in (a),
whereas its dependence on the number of blades at the best efficiency point is presented in (b). Plot (c) shows the influence of the
addition of splitters while preserving the overall number of blades (main and splitter). The blue squares refer to the standard eight-
bladed impeller having no splitters.

increased from 30 to 50%, the original slip factor is
fairly recovered. However, no further improvement is
noticed using a 70% splitter. Therefore, it is con-
cluded that the 50% splitter is sufficient to achieve
slip behavior comparable to that obtained using the
standard impeller.
Pump head and hydraulic efficiency
This section presents the pump performance repre-
sented by the pump head and the pump hydraulic effi-
ciency at different exit flow coefficient 2. The
numerical values extracted from ANSYS CFX solver
enable us to calculate the pump head and efficiency.
Contrary to the reduced slip, Figure 9(a) and (b)
shows a remarkable decrease in the pump head with
less impact on the corresponding pump hydraulic effi-
ciency by increasing the number of blades. This is pos-
sibly because of the built-up of frictional losses that
overcomes the energy harvested due to slip reduction.
The effect of replacing half of the original full
blades by splitter blades is further examined in
Figure 9(c) and (d). The figure shows the effect of
splitters on the pump head and hydraulic efficiency
while preserving the overall number of blades (main
and splitter). A remarkable increase in the calculated
pump head along with a limited increase in the cor-
responding hydraulic efficiency, particularly below the
BEP, is obtained as the splitter length is increased
from 30 to 50%. This anomaly in the difference
between the insertion of a whole blade and the inser-
tion of a splitter might be due to the blockage and the
skin friction effects that further deteriorates the per-
formance of a whole blade as compared to a splitter.
Thus, we conclude that for the pump under consider-
ation replacing half the full original blades with 50%
span splitters helps increase the pump head by at least
20% with minimal influence in the pump hydraulic
efficiency at the pump’s BEP.
Conclusion
Numerical simulation of flow through a centrifugal
pump is carried out to study the behavior of the
flow through the impeller and to evaluate the slip
factor as function of the flow rate, the number of
blades, and the splitter length. It is shown that the
computational results are in good agreement with
the pump’s performance curve in the neighborhood
of the BEP but is only in fair agreement with it near
the neighborhood of the low and high flow rates. The
overall slip factor is found to change linearly with the
flow coefficient in a similar way as the expression by
Qiu et al.7 Reducing the fitting parameter F given by
Qui et al. from 0.6 to its default value 0.52 gives very
good agreement. This indicates that the Qui et al. rela-
tion for estimating slip, although it is well accepted,
needs further investigation to evaluate the fitting par-
ameters correctly in its relations to the impeller
geometry.

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Khalafallah et al.
(a)
(c)
Figure 9. The pump head and hydraulic efficiency are plotted for a different number of blades and splitters lengths. In subplots (c)
and (d), the blue dots refer to the eight-bladed standard impeller having no splitters. The overall number of blades (main and splitter) is
preserved.
The effect of increasing the number of blades to up
to 10 for the tested pump, is found to increase the slip
factor to reach saturation at about 0.69. Also, the
insertion of 30 and 50% splitters increases the slip
factor. However, the 70% span splitter does not
show any further improvement in the slip behavior.
The application of splitters and the increase of the
number of blades are also examined in their influence
on both the head and the hydraulic efficiency. The
splitter blades are found to increase the developed
head by about 20% at the BEP, while a decrease in
the pump head is noticed when using more blades. It
is clear that there is a contrast when applying these
modifications although both of them perform the
same function of improving the flow guidance. The
reason for this anomaly is that improving flow guid-
ance increases the slip factor which in turn increases
the developed head; however, the higher incurred fric-
tion losses and blockage effect due to whole blades
insertion offset the improvement due to better guid-
ance. Using splitters, improvement in the hydraulic
efficiency is found with flow rate up to
Q=QBEP  1:0, which is then followed by slight
decrease due to the increased friction losses.
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