Resumen de Towards Robust Design of Centrifugal Irrigation Pumps
V. K. Chandola, Sushil K. Sharma, V. K. Sharma
Centrifugal pump sets are widely used in India by farmers for irrigating crops. The resource poor marginal and small farmers of India prefer low cost small size centrifugal pump sets. These pump sets are designed to give best efficiency at a head and speed for which they are designed [Best efficiency point (BEP)]. Due to fluctuating voltage, changing heads (due to change in ground water level) and other noise factors, there is wide gap between the actual efficiency and the rated efficiency of these pump sets. The present study attempts to develop a robust centrifugal pump set for the small and marginal farmers through Taguchi’s robust design technique after obtaining the target design through house of quality (QFD). The main controllable factors affecting the performance of the pump like D/b ratio, diameter of the impeller, and motor capacity have been considered for parameter design of the pump sets. The experiment was conducted by taking two prominent noise factors under the study area i.e. voltage and head. For design of experiment L9 orthogonal array was adopted both for the controllable factors in the inner array and noise factors in the outer array. The optimum parameter setting obtained through experimentation resulted in robust broad banded design which was confirmed by conducting the confirmation run.
