ABSTRACT
The fundamentals of centrifugal pump design have remained largely unchanged over the past 50 years. Although CFD analysis is usually employed today by engineers who do hydraulic design, the design basics of pump impellers, volutes, and diffusers have not fundamentally changed. The shapes of pump performance curves and the characteristics of pumps operating in systems are little different from the way they appeared in pumps and systems half a century ago. However, the consequences of misapplying pumps (i.e., choosing inappropriate configurations, poor material selections, incorrect sizing of pumps, or operating pumps too far from BEP on their H-Q curves) are far more significant than they were 50 years ago. The reasons for this include the fact that energy is much more expensive, maintenance of pumps is far more costly, and downtime in a production facility is a far more expensive thing to consider than was the case 50 years ago.
