Contributed by the Fluids Engineering Division for publication in the JOURNAL OF FLUIDS ENGINEERING. Manuscript received by the Fluids Engineering Division September 25, 2002; revised manuscript received January 20, 2004. Associate Editor V. Tsujimoto.
The hydraulic performance of centrifugal oil pumps can be illustrated by using three curves: head-flow rate, power-flow rate and efficiency-flow rate. Figure 1 shows the performance curves of the pumps. In general, the performance can be given exactly through experiment only. The attempt of this paper is to calculate the several parameters which describe the sub-macro-characteristics, such as the slip factor, hydraulic, volumetric and mechanical efficiencies, based on the performance and geometry of impeller at best efficiency point (BEP).
