Numerical and Experimental Analysis of Transient Flow Field and Pressure Pulsations of an Axial-Flow Pump Considering the Pump–Pipeline Interaction

Abstract

The internal flow in a vertical axial-flow pump is a complex unsteady three-dimensional viscous flow. An unstable flow often produces complex flow phenomena such as flow separation, vortices, and secondary reflux, which reduces the operating efficiency of the pump and can endanger safety and stability. In this paper, computational fluid dynamics is used to calculate the flow characteristics in an axial-flow pump using the shear stress transport and curvature correction (SST-CC) model for turbulence modified to account for the rotational curvature. Furthermore, the dependability of the numerical results was confirmed by a test with an actual model of a pump. The transient deviation angle at the impeller inlet of the pump, the stream field attributes in various spanwise parts of the impeller and guide vane, and the velocity distributions at the impeller inlet and outlet were analyzed. The omega method was utilized to recognize the vortex structure inside the guide vane. Moreover, the development of the transient vortex structure inside the guide vane was studied. As the flow rate increased, the scale and turbulent kinetic energy of the vortex structure gradually decreased. The time-domain graph for the impeller inlet is clearly periodic, with three peaks and three troughs in an impeller rotational period. The dominant frequency in the spectrum at each monitoring point was basically the blade frequency, and the secondary dominant frequency was twice the blade frequency.

Keywords

• axial-flow pump
• pump-pipeline interaction
• transient flow field
• pressure pulsation
• experimental validation