Measuring Pump Efficiency: Uncertainty Considerations

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to analyze the uncertainty associated with pump efficiency measurements and to determine reasonable confidence intervals for these data. In the past, many industrial sales and some pieces of academic research have been based upon the experimental data of pump efficiencies; yet few have questioned the accuracy of the experimental data and no one has provided a confidence interval which reflects the range of uncertainty in the measurement. In this paper, a method for calculating this confidence interval is presented and it is shown that substantially large confidence intervals exist within the testing results of a pump. Furthermore, it is recommended that these confidence intervals be included with the efficiency data whenever it is reported.