EnginSoft - Conference Abstracts

EnginSoft International Conference 2009
CAE Technologies for Industry

Multi Variate Analysis in Systematic Impeller Design Applying modeFRONTIER

Maurer Wolfgang - Sulzer Pumps (Switzerland)
Krueger Susanne - Sulzer Pumps (Switzerland)
Fuligno Luca - EnginSoft
Linares Francesco - EnginSoft GmbH

Abstract

Designing centrifugal pumps is a challenging process since many parameters define the entire geometry. The most important component is the impeller which transforms the kinetic energy into pressure and generates the head required. To obtain an optimised impeller geometry, more than 20 parameters should be varied: this results in a complex design space and a variation of the parameters yields an extensive database for every single impeller. Applying this for an entire pump range requires the availability of advanced and highly sophisticated design tools. The decreasing time to market together with the increasing demands on product flexibility is putting pressure on product development. The usage of existing databases helps to speed up this process. This paper presents an approach based on a classification of existing impeller designs with Multi Variate Analysis through self organising maps (SOM). A proper classification of the available designs gives the developer a better understanding of the complex parameter correlation. Based on these structures, SOM enable the prediction of not yet available components by interpolating among the existing designs. This procedure not only gives a first parameter estimate for the new component but also properly conditions the variable ranges for an optimisation which is likely to follow.