Mixed-flow irrigation pump design optimization for Bangladesh
Year: 2017
Editor: Anja Maier, Stanko Škec, Harrison Kim, Michael Kokkolaras, Josef Oehmen, Georges Fadel, Filippo Salustri, Mike Van der Loos
Author: Yu, Su; Colton, Jonathan S.
Series: ICED
Institution: Georgia Institute of Technology, United States of America
Section: Resource Sensitive Design, Design Research Applications and Case Studies
Page(s): 071-080
ISBN: 978-1-904670-89-6
ISSN: 2220-4342
Abstract
Irrigation pumps are indispensable to the production of major crops in Southeast Asia. This study proposes a design method to optimize the design of a mixed-flow irrigation pump model in a cost-effective and energy-efficient manner through a case study in Bangladesh. This method deviates from standard ones in industrialized nations to account for resource limitations in developing countries. Based on this approach, the paper optimizes four design parameters using numerical simulation, computational fluid dynamics, and analysis of variance. The results of numerical simulations reveal that the pumping strength may be increased from 0.286 to 0.348 (22%), while the efficiency may be increased from 40.2% to 54.2% (14.2%) when operated at 1500 RPM. This study also ranks the effectiveness of each design parameter and their interactions. An optimized design is presented for the current model, and an optimization procedure is developed for all axial-flow and mixed-flow pumps.
Keywords: Numerical methods, Optimisation, Irrigation pumps, Developing countries, Simulation