Caprari Enhances High-Pressure Pump Design using Inverse Design Method

Caprari are a global market leader specializing in solutions and applications for efficient and sustainable integrated water cycle management. In 1945 they started as a pump manufacturer for agriculture and irrigation purposes, but over the years have expanded into multiple application areas such as borehole pumps, surface pumps and sewage pumps.

Fig1: TURBOdesign Pre can predict performances for the entire multi-stage centrifugal pump with impeller, diffuser and return channel vanes and volute

Caprari wanted to design a multi-stage high pressure pump for snow applications commonly used in ski resorts. However, the diffuser and return channel were not delivering the performance that was expected. Being well aware of the inverse design advantages for their previous impeller designs, they decided to use this approach on these components as well.

“Earlier, we used to employ the traditional “trial and error” approach and in-house codes but this made us rely heavily on CFD validation runs. The inverse design method appeared more intuitive and could guide us to a good design without going through multiple CFD analyses. We have already used it successfully to optimize the impellers for our multi-stage pumps and wastewater applications”.

Fig2: 3D CAD traditional design model of the first stage vaned return channel

A high performance impeller had already been achieved using inverse design, which made the impeller outlet flow profile available for designing the downstream diffuser and return channel vanes. With TURBOdesign1, they were able to directly impose it as inlet boundary condition and as a result, the resulting diffuser vane automatically matched the upstream impeller. Next, the same principle was applied to design the return channel vane to match the upstream diffuser. Usually, with traditional design methods, multiple design iterations are necessary for this and so this greatly expedited their overall design process.

Fig3: 3D CAD inverse design model of the first stage vaned return channel

“Earlier, we used to employ the traditional “trial and error” approach and in-house codes but this made us rely heavily on CFD validation runs. The inverse design method appeared more intuitive and could guide us to a good design without going through multiple CFD analysis.”

Out of ADT’s toolset, TURBOdesign Pre and TURBOdesign1 are the most heavily employed at Caprari. They find TURBOdesign Pre’s capability to specify sizing constraints extremely useful for designing wastewater pumps with the required solid-handling capacity. As for TURBOdesign1, the most frequently used feature is blade loading which enables them to perform quick manual iterations between blade profiles and also for automatic optimizations.

Fig4: TURBOdesign LinkWB automatically creates workbench projects and connected elements for optimization in Ansys Workbench

It only took two days of training to get Caprari engineers up to speed with TURBOdesign Suite’s features, and within 2-3 months of usage they were already quite confident with the software. Follow-up consultations were provided by the ADT support team during this period which they found to be highly satisfactory.

Fig5: Assembly and 3D model of a high performance multi-stage centrifugal pump developed by Caprari

Caprari have several compelling reasons for using ADT software in their pump design projects. It saves them approximately 2 months of lead time per project, which in turn results in cost savings in the order of €50.000 on each project. In terms of pump performance, they have consistently noticed a major reduction in power consumption by their inverse designed pumps, leading to smaller motor requirements and even further cost savings. Moreover, efficiency improvements of 1-2% points on an average have been achieved through the use of TURBOdesign Suite’s optimization tools. ADT’s software has also been very economical from an operational perspective, since no hardware upgrades were needed to run TURBOdesign1.

“Without inverse design, we would have been able to design our products but in much longer timeframes. The inverse design approach greatly reduces time to market.”

A more subdued subheading

Caprari Enhances High-Pressure Pump Design using Inverse Design Method and TURBOdesign, Resulting in Improved Performance and Cost Savings

“Earlier, we used to employ the traditional “trial and error” approach and in-house codes but this made us rely heavily on CFD validation runs. The inverse design method appeared more intuitive and could guide us to a good design without going through multiple CFD analysis.”

“Without inverse design, we would have been able to design our products but in much longer timeframes. The inverse design approach greatly reduces time to market.”

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