Efficient CFD evaluation of the NPSH for centrifugal pumps

This paper provides the reader with guidelines for the definition of coarse but effective meshes on reduced computational domains in order to accurately evaluate the drop curves and the NPSH3% of centrifugal pumps by means of CFD. The procedure has been validated against experimental data, carried out on single stages of multi-stage centrifugal pumps, and numerical data obtained by a monodimensional model. Thanks to the proposed procedure, without any detriment to the accuracy, a significant computational cost reduction has been experienced with respect to simulations performed on complete stages.