Effects of Flow Coefficient on Miniature Centrifugal Pump Performance

In order to help the design of miniature centrifugal pumps, the design method for macrosize centrifugal pumps is reviewed and the critical parameter, the flow coefficient, is examined in this paper for the miniature centrifugal pumps. The performance of the pumps designed is analyzed theoretically, numerically, and experimentally. Both numerical and theoretical results show that the value of the optimized flow coefficient is approximately 1.47. This value is about five times larger than the recommended value using conventional design technique for macrosize pumps. The optimum radius ratio obtained numerically is approximately 0.4. It can be concluded that the design approach for macrosize pumps is not applicable for pumps in the scale of decimeters. The results obtained in the present study provide us guidelines on the design and performance study of the miniature centrifugal pump.