CFD Analysis of Cold Stage Centrifugal Pump for Cooling of Hot IsostaticPress with Validation Case Study

Abstract: Hot isostatic pressing (HIPing) has been a growing material treatment process for performance part manufacturingfor over 50 years. This process of using an inert gas at high temperature and pressure to densifymaterials leads to vastly improved material properties by removing pores and other micro- aws. Interest forHIP treatment has greatly increased in recent years due to the development of metal 3D printing technology.HIP treatment is very well suited for treating 3D printed and cast parts due to their relatively poor materialproperties.An important part of any HIP cycle is the cooling phase. New uniform and rapid cooling technology hasvastly reduced HIP cycle times, but room for further improvement exists. This study aims to accurately andtrustfully evaluate the performance of one of a pair of centrifugal pumps used in a Quintus Technologies ABHIP cooling system. Computational uid dynamics (CFD) software and techniques are used to achieve this.This paper is split into two main parts; the rst of which is a validation case study, and the second is theperformance analysis of a Quintus HIP cold gas pump. The validation case study is conducted to supportthe accuracy and reliability of results obtained in the Quintus cold gas pump performance analysis.The validation case study results show good agreement with experimental data and supports the accuracy ofCFD in the analysis of centrifugal pumps. Both detailed ow and macro ow characteristics are shown to beaccurately predicted. The pump curve generated for the Quintus Cold gas pump quanties its performanceover a range of rotational speeds and mass ow rates. The work done here lays the groundwork for furtheranalysis and improvement of Quintus HIP cooling systems.