Turbomachinery

ME-326
Fluid Mechanics
Wah Engineering College
Objectives
• Identify various types of pumps and turbines,
and understand how they work
• Apply dimensional analysis to design new
pumps or turbines that are geometrically
similar to existing pumps or turbines
• Use specific speed for preliminary design and
selection of pumps and turbines
Categories: Pumps
There are two broad categories of turbomachinery,
pumps and turbines.

• Pump: The word pump is a general term for any fluid

machine that adds energy to a fluid.

• Energy absorbing devices since energy is supplied to

them, and they transfer most of that energy to the
fluid, usually via a rotating shaft.

• The increase in fluid energy is usually felt as an

increase in the pressure of the fluid.

The purpose of a pump is to add energy to a fluid, resulting in an

increase in fluid pressure, not necessarily an increase of fluid speed
across the pump.
Categories: Turbines

Turbines: energy producing devices

• Turbines extract energy from the fluid and

transfer most of that energy to some form
of mechanical energy output, typically in
the form of a rotating shaft.

• The fluid at the outlet of a turbine suffers

an energy loss, typically in the form of a loss
of pressure.

The purpose of a turbine is to extract energy from a fluid, resulting in

a decrease of fluid pressure, not necessarily a decrease of fluid speed
across the turbine.
Categories
• When used with gases, pumps are called fans, blowers, or
compressors, depending on the relative values of pressure
rise and volume flow rate.
• For gasses pumps are further broken down into
– Fans: Low pressure gradient, high volume flow rate. Examples
include ceiling fans and propellers
– Blower : Medium pressure gradient, medium volume flow rate.
Examples include centrifugal and squirrel cage blowers found in
furnaces, leaf blowers, and hair dryers
– Compressor: High pressure gradient, low volume flow rate.
Example include air compressors for air tools, refrigerant
compressors for refrigerators and air conditioners.
Categories
• Positive displacement machines
– In positive-displacement machines, fluid is
directed into a closed volume.
– Energy transfer to the fluid is accomplished by
movement of the boundary of the closed volume,
causing the volume to expand or contract, thereby
sucking fluid in or squeezing fluid out, respectively.
– Pump : human heart,
– Turbine: home water meter
Categories
• Dynamic Machines
– In dynamic machines, there is no closed volume
– Rotating blades supply or extract energy to or from the fluid.
– For pumps, these rotating blades are called impeller blades, while
for turbines, the rotating blades are called runner blades or
buckets.
– Two types : Enclosed or ducted pumps/turbines and open
pumps/turbines.
– Enclosed/ducted pumps: water pump in your car
– Open pumps: ceiling fan or propeller of a helicopter
– Enclosed turbine: hydro turbine
– Open turbine : wind turbine
 Pumps
• The performance of a pump is characterized additionally by its net
head H, defined as the change in Bernoulli head between the inlet
and outlet of the pump,
• Net Head

• Net head is proportional to the useful power actually delivered to

the fluid. It is traditional to call this power the water horsepower
 Pumps
• In pump terminology, the external power supplied to the pump is
called the brake horsepower, which we abbreviate as bhp. For the
typical case of a rotating shaft supplying the brake horsepower,

• where ω is the rotational speed of the shaft (rad/s) and T shaft is the
torque supplied to the shaft. We define pump efficiency as the
ratio of useful power to supplied power,
Matching a Pump to piping system
• Pump performance curves
for a centrifugal pump
– BEP: best efficiency point
– h*, bhp*, V* correspond to
BEP
– Shutoff head: achieved by
closing outlet (V=0)
– Free delivery: no load on Typical pump performance curves for a
system ( Hrequired = 0) centrifugal pump; the curve shapes for
other types of pumps may differ, and the
curves change as shaft rotation speed is
changed.
 Matching a Pump to piping system
• The operating point of a piping system determined by
matching system requirements (required net head) to
pump performance (available net head).
• In a typical application, Hrequired and Havailable match at one
unique value of flow rate—this is the operating point or
duty point of the system.
• For a given piping system with its major and minor
losses, elevation changes, etc., the required net head
increases with volume flow rate.
• The available net head of most pumps decreases with
flow rate, at least over the majority of its recommended
operating range. The operating point of a piping
system is established as the volume
• Hence, the system curve and the pump performance flow rate where the system curve and
curve intersect as sketched in Figure, and this the pump performance curve
establishes the operating point. intersect.
 Energy Equation

• Equation is evaluated from the inlet of the piping system (point 1, upstream of the
pump) to the outlet of the piping system point 2, downstream of the pump).
• Useful pump head delivered to the fluid does four things:
1. It increases the static pressure of the fluid from point 1 to point 2 (first term on
the right).
2. It increases the dynamic pressure (kinetic energy) of the fluid from point 1 to
point 2 (second term on the right).
3. It raises the elevation (potential energy) of the fluid from point 1 to point 2
(third term on the right).
4. It overcomes irreversible head losses in the piping system (last term on the
right).
• To match a pump to a system, and to
determine the operating point, we equate
Hrequired to Havailable, which is the (typically
known) net head of the pump as a function of
volume flow rate.
Moody Chart

• It presents the Darcy friction factor for pipe flow as a function of the Reynolds
number and ε/D over a wide range.

• Although it is developed for circular pipes, it can also be used for noncircular
pipes by replacing the diameter by the hydraulic diameter.
Moody Chart
Moody Chart
• For laminar flow, the friction factor decreases with increasing Reynolds
number, and it is independent of surface roughness.
• The friction factor is a minimum for a smooth pipe and increases with
roughness.
• The transition region from the laminar to turbulent regime (2300 < Re
<4000) is indicated by the shaded area in the Moody chart.
• At very large Reynolds numbers (to the right of the dashed line on the
chart) the friction factor curves corresponding to specified relative
roughness curves are nearly horizontal, and thus the friction factors are
independent of the Reynolds number.
• It is common practice in the pump industry to
offer several choices of impeller diameter for a
single pump casing. There are several reasons
for this:
1. To save manufacturing costs,
2. To enable capacity increase by simple impeller
replacement,
3. To standardize installation mountings, and
4. To enable reuse of equipment for a different
application.
Pump Cavitation and Net Positive Suction
Head
• When pumping liquids, it is possible for the local pressure inside the pump
to fall below the vapor pressure of the liquid, Pv. (Pv is also called the
saturation pressure Psat and is listed in thermodynamics tables as a
function of saturation temperature.)
• When P <Pv, vapor-filled bubbles called cavitation bubbles appear.
• the liquid boils locally, typically on the suction side of the rotating impeller
blades where the pressure is lowest.
• After the cavitation bubbles are formed, they are transported through the
pump to regions where the pressure is higher, causing rapid collapse of
the bubbles.
• It is this collapse of the bubbles that is undesirable, since it causes noise,
vibration, reduced efficiency, and most importantly, damage to the
impeller blades.
Pump Cavitation and Net Positive Suction
Head
• To avoid cavitation, we must ensure that the local pressure everywhere inside the pump
stays above the vapor pressure.
• cavitation criteria are typically specified at the pump inlet.
• It is useful to employ a flow parameter called net positive suction head (NPSH), defined as
the difference between the pump’s inlet stagnation pressure head and the vapor pressure
head,

• Pump manufacturers test their pumps for cavitation in a pump test facility by varying the
volume flow rate and inlet pressure in a controlled manner.
• at a given flow rate and liquid temperature, the pressure at the pump inlet is slowly
lowered until cavitation occurs somewhere inside the pump.
• The value of NPSH is calculated using above Eq and is recorded at this operating condition.
The process is repeated at several other flow rates, and the pump manufacturer then
publishes a performance parameter called the required net positive suction head
(NPSHrequired), defined as the minimum NPSH necessary to avoid cavitation in the pump.
• In order to ensure that a pump does not cavitate, the actual or available NPSH
must be greater than NPSHrequired.
• It is important to note that the value of NPSH varies not only with flow rate, but
also with liquid temperature, since Pv is a function of temperature.
Pumps in Series
• When operated in series, the combined net
head is simply the sum of the net heads of
each pump (at a given volume flow rate),
Example
• In this example, pump 3 is the strongest and pump 1 is the
weakest. The shutoff head of the three pumps combined in series
is equal to the sum of the shutoff head of each individual pump.
• For low values of volume flow rate, the net head of the three
pumps in series is equal to H1+H2+H3.
• Beyond the free delivery of pump 1 (to the right of the first vertical
dashed gray line in Figure), pump 1 should be shut off and
bypassed.
• Otherwise it would be running beyond its maximum designed
operating point, and the pump or its motor could be damaged.
• With pump 1 bypassed, the combined net head becomes H2+H3.
Pumps in Parallel
• When two or more identical (or similar)
pumps are operated in parallel, their
individual volume flow rates (rather than net
heads) are summed,
• The free delivery of the three combined pumps is equal to the
sum of the free delivery of each individual pump. For low
values of net head, the capacity of the three pumps in parallel
is equal to V1+V2+V3.
• Above the shutoff head of pump 1 (above the first horizontal
dashed gray line in Figure), pump 1 should be shut off and its
branch should be blocked (with a valve).
• Otherwise it would be running beyond its maximum designed
operating point, and the pump or its motor could be damaged.
• With pump 1 shut off and blocked, the combined capacity
becomes V2+V3.
• above the shutoff head of pump 2, that pump should also be
shut off and blocked.
• The combined capacity is then equal to V3 alone.