Does anyone have a tutorial, tips & tricks or best practice info on how to draw volutes/involutes for pumps and turbos?
Thanks!
Does anyone have a tutorial, tips & tricks or best practice info on how to draw volutes/involutes for pumps and turbos?
Thanks!
Thanks Roland, but I'm guessing that a centrifugal fan only needs a 2D volute. Centrifugal pumps and turbos need that same volute in 3D!
There must be a way to do this in SolidWorks?
Dang! All this time I've been designing my fans in 3D like a sucker! I needlessly wasted a whole dimension. I could have used that extra dimension for something else.
Dash! I didn't explain clearly.
Some volutes have the entry and exit ports on the same plane, ie 2D flat spiral
Other volutes have the entry/exit ports offset from each other, ie 3D helix
I hope this is clearer?
Sounds like you need to combine a spiral and a helix.
There is a part you can examine in my model bank at Index of /models , in the zip file "Hinge.zip". The part is "BarrelSpring.SLDPRT". Here I generated a cone-shaped helix by intersecting two surfaces. You might do something similar to generate a spiral that descend in a helix.
In the 3D volute image it looks like you want to make this, no?:
The best way to create any 3D efficient volute is to use a third party software such as CFturbo / http://de.cfturbo.com /.
if you would like to stay only with SW then you'd better use a SW Design Table to do the circular spiral profile generation and the spiral itself (some knowledge is required to do that) or if you sue a trapezoid profiles just design the spiral exit profile and do solid loft from the exit-profile to a narrow rectangular profile at the volute tongue, and then fillet the loft edges with a variable radius fillet. Similarly, loft the volute diffuser from the last spiral profile to the diffuser exit profile (normally circular profile of a pipe) with a proper guide curve.
I hope this helps in your volute design.
I have made volutes for small centrifugal fans. I use a spiral to generate the outside contour. Seems to work well enough. Basically, the volume of a volute needs to increase to accommodate the additional fluid entering the volute as fluid moves toward the outlet.