A study on a series of axially symmetric potential flows in radial-flow impeller channels has been made with the aid of an electrical analogy. An electrolytic tank was built and tested with flows for which the mathematical solution was known. The experimental determination of velocity along the boundaries was within one percent of the exact value.
Velocity distributions on families of impeller channels with ellipsoidal boundaries were then obtained. The parameters varied were inlet to outlet area ratio and eccentricity of the bounding ellipses. These results are presented as graphs and in addition the maximum velocity along the front shroud is given as a function of the various parameters.
This analogy was also applied to a well designed commercial impeller channel and the results compared to the preceding study.
