Parametric Performance of a Class of Standard Discharge Scrolls for Industrial Centrifugal Compressors
For many reasons, the discharge volute of a centrifugal compressor is becoming more and more critical for the performance of the machine. The most important are the need to reduce the size of the casing and to minimize the delivery time and cost of the compressor. A database of standard geometries represents a good engineering solution to both these requirements. In fact, it is possible, from a mechanical point of view, to design a class of similar volutes to fit different casings and stages. On the other hand, from the performance point of view, very little has been done to describe families of similar scrolls and how the performance of a baseline geometry can be adapted to take into account the differences which exist in the scrolls of the same family. A lot of data are available in literature but they refer to single specific geometries and to optimized individual designs. In this paper, a description of the analysis which has been done to investigate which may be the most convenient parameters to describe the volute performance is presented together with some experimental results which have been used to validate the analysis.