Carbon Fiber Polymer Reinforced 3D Printed Composites for Centrifugal Pump Impeller Manufacturing

Centrifugal pumps are used extensively in various everyday applications. The occurrence of corrosion phenomena during operation often leads to the failure of a pump's operating components, such as the impeller. The present research study examines the utilization of composite materials for fabricating centrifugal pump components using additive manufacturing as an effort to fabricate corrosion resistant parts. To achieve the latter two nanocomposite materials, carbon fiber reinforced polyamide and carbon fiber reinforced polyphenylene sulfide were compared with two metal alloys, cast iron and brass, which are currently used in pump impeller manufacturing. The mechanical properties of the materials are extracted by performing a series of experiments, such as uniaxial tensile tests, nanoindentation and scanning electron microscope (SEM) examination of the specimen's fracture area. Then, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis is performed using various impeller designs to determine the fluid pressure exerted on the impeller's geometry during its operation. Finally, the maximum power rating of an impeller that can be made from such composites will be determined using a static finite element model (FEM). The FEM static model is developed by integrating the data collected from the experiments with the results obtained from the CFD analysis. The current research work shows that nanocomposites can potentially be used for developing impellers with rated power of up to 9.41 kW.