Modeling of the operation of a disc pump with the wall roughness consideration

Background: at present, a small number of studies of disk pumps operating on a low-viscosity liquid have been conducted. In addition, among the existing works, numerical calculations are presented, which have a serious discrepancy with the experiments carried out. This article is devoted to numerical simulation of the operation of a disk pump on water, comparison of the calculation results with experimental data.

Aims: to determine the factors affecting the convergence of the main characteristics with experimental data when performing CFD calculations on a low-viscosity liquid.

Methods: in this paper, a numerical modeling method based on the solution of discrete analogs of the basic equations of hydrodynamics is used. To compare CFD calculations with the experiment, a test bench was created on which two configurations of the impeller were studied.

Results: it is shown that for this type of dynamic machines, it is important to take into account the influence of the roughness of solid walls when modeling their operation on a low-viscosity liquid, since it has a significant effect on the characteristics of the disk pump. The obtained characteristics are compared with experimental data, as well as flow patterns in the flow part.

Conclusions: based on the results of the article, it can be argued that taking into account roughness in numerical calculations of a dynamic pump has a positive effect on convergence with experimental data.