Mixed flow pumps are in-line pumps, used for applications requiring high volume flow with a low discharge pressure. Experimental testing of pumps has proved to be a difficult way of understanding how hydraulic design changes influence pump performance. As a result, CFD has increasingly been used to investigate the behavior of pump flows, and is now frequently used during the design phase by pump manufacturers around the world.

The mixing plane model in FLUENT 6.0 was used to predict the flow field upstream and downstream of the rotating impeller and stationary guide vanes. The operating characteristics of the pump over a range of flow rates were also determined. The results could be used to predict the performance of similar pumps operating at similar conditions.

Velocity vectors on the upstream side of the pump along with those in the impeller region