The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea 한국음향학회지 ISSN:1225-4428(Print) 2287-3775(Online)

The aim of this study was to enhance the flow rate and noise performance of a centrifugal pump in dishwashers by designing an optimized impeller shape through numerical and experimental investigations. To evaluate the performance of the target centrifugal pump, experiment was conducted using a pump performance tester and noise experiment was carried out in a semi-anechoic chamber with microphones and a reflecting wall behind the dishwasher. Through the use of advanced computational fluid dynamics techniques, numerical simulations were performed to analyze the flow and aeroacoustics performance of our target centrifugal pump impeller. To achieve this, numerical simulations were carried out using the Reynolds-Average Navier-Stokes equations and Ffowcs-Willliams and Hawkings equations as governing equations. In order to ensure the validity of numerical methods, a thorough comparison of numerical results with experimental results. After having confirmed the reliability of the current numerical method of this study, the optimization of the target centrifugal pump impeller was conducted. An improvement in flow rate was confirmed numerically, and a manufactured proto-type of the optimized model was used for experimental investigation. Furthermore, it was observed that by applying the fan law, we could effectively reduce noise levels without reducing the flow rate.