scholarly journals The Role of Blade Sinusoidal Tubercle Trailing Edge in a Centrifugal Pump with Low Specific Speed

Processes ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (9) ◽  
pp. 625 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bowen Li ◽  
Xiaojun Li ◽  
Xiaoqi Jia ◽  
Feng Chen ◽  
Hua Fang

Pressure pulsations may cause high-amplitude vibrations during the process of a centrifugal pump. The trailing edge shape of the blade has a critical influence on the pump’s pressure fluctuation and hydraulic characterization. In this paper, inspired by the humpback whale flipper, the authors research the impact of applying the sinusoidal tubercles to the blade suction side of the trailing edge. Numerical calculation and experiments are carried out to investigate the impact of the trailing edge shape on the pressure pulsations and performance of a centrifugal pump with low specific speed. Two designed impellers are tested, one is a sinusoidal tubercle trailing edge (STTE) impeller and the other is the original trailing edge (OTE) prototype. The detailed study indicates that the sinusoidal tubercle trailing edge (STTE) reduces pressure pulsation and enhances hydraulic performance. In the volute tongue region, the pressure pulsation amplitudes of STTE at fBPF decrease significantly. The STTE impeller also effectively changes the vortex structure and intensity in the blade trailing edge area. This investigation will be of great benefit to the optimal design of pumps.

2016 ◽  
Vol 138 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bo Gao ◽  
Ning Zhang ◽  
Zhong Li ◽  
Dan Ni ◽  
MinGuan Yang

The blade trailing edge profile is of crucial importance for the performance and pressure pulsations of centrifugal pumps. In the present study, numerical investigation is conducted to analyze the effect of the blade trailing edge profile influencing the performance and unsteady pressure pulsations in a low specific speed centrifugal pump. Five typical blade trailing edges are analyzed including original trailing edge (OTE), circle edge (CE), ellipse on pressure side (EPS), ellipse on suction side (ESS), and ellipse on both sides (EBS). Results show that the well-designed blade trailing edges, especially for the EPS and EBS profiles, can significantly improve the pump efficiency. Pressure amplitudes at fBPF and 2fBPF are together calculated to evaluate the influence of the blade trailing edge profile on pressure pulsations. The EPS and EBS profiles contribute obviously to pressure pulsations reduction. In contrast, the CE and ESS profiles lead to increase of pressure pulsation amplitude compared with the OTE pump. Vorticity distribution at the blade trailing edge demonstrates that the EPS and EBS profiles have an effective impact on reducing vortex intensity at the blade trailing edge. Consequently, rotor–stator interaction could be attenuated leading to lower pressure pulsation amplitude. It is thought to be the main reason of pressure pulsations reduction obtained with the proper modified blade trailing edges. The results would pave the way for further optimization of the blade trailing edge profile.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chengshuo Wu ◽  
Peng Wu ◽  
Dazhuan Wu

Abstract The existence of secondary flow in the impeller brings extra energy loss and aggravates the pressure pulsation which will worsen the hydraulic and dynamic performance of the pump. In this paper, based on the forces balance in the direction perpendicular to the streamline, an optimal design method for the blade thickness of a low specific speed centrifugal pump is proposed to suppress the secondary flow in the impeller. The origin impellers with 5 and 7 cylinder blades are redesigned and the hydraulic and dynamic performance of the model pump are investigated by numerical simulation and experimental. Results show that the blade modification proposed in this paper can effectively improve the efficiency of the model pump and reduce the internal pressure pulsations. The internal flow analysis shows that the performance improvement attributes to the suppression of secondary flow in the impeller. And the entropy generation rate is introduced to measure and locate the loss in the pump. Results show that on the one hand, the suppression of secondary flow can reduce the energy loss in the pump and improve the efficiency; on the other hand, it can repress the jet wake structure at impeller outlet and alleviate the intensity of pressure pulsations.


2020 ◽  
Vol 143 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Baoling Cui ◽  
Yingbin Zhang ◽  
Yakun Huang

Abstract Unsteady pressure pulsation and fluid force induced by flow instabilities in the centrifugal pump is an important cause of vibration, which is detrimental to the safe operation of the pump. In this study, we numerically investigated the pressure pulsation and radial force in a low-specific-speed centrifugal pump by using the detached-eddy simulation method. We also performed a vibration displacement experiment on the shaft of the centrifugal pump. The vortex identification method was introduced to clarify the internal correlation between unsteady flow structures with pressure pulsations. The results showed that the pressure pulsations at the impeller outlet were closely associated with the periodic vortex shedding from the blade pressure surface. The rotor–stator interaction between a relatively big trailing vortex core and volute tongue generated larger pressure pulsation and radial force in the pump at a low flow rate. Under a large flow rate, the trailing vortex core was easily broken and dispersed, and this resulted in smaller pressure pulsation and radial force compared with that at a low flow rate. Under the design flow rate, the pressure pulsation intensity and the radial force in the impeller were smaller than that under the off-design flow rate. Compared with the spectra between the radial force on the impeller and radial displacement on the shaft, they both presented higher amplitude at the shaft frequency. The vibration of the pump shaft was closely related to the radial force on the impeller.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 168781401878952 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinfeng Zhang ◽  
Guidong Li ◽  
Jieyun Mao ◽  
Shouqi Yuan ◽  
Yefei Qu ◽  
...  

To elucidate the influences of the outlet position of splitter blades on the performance of a low-specific-speed centrifugal pump, two different splitter blade schemes were proposed: one located in the middle of the channel and the other having a deviation angle at the trailing edge of splitter blade toward the suction side of the main blade. Experiments on the model pump with different splitter blade schemes were conducted, and numerical simulations on internal flow characteristics in the impellers were studied by means of the shear stress transport k- ω turbulence model. The results suggest that there is a good agreement between the experimental and numerical results. The splitter blade schemes can effectively optimize the structure of the jet-wake pattern and improve the internal flow states in the impeller channel. In addition, the secondary flow and inlet circulation on the pressure surface of main blade, the flow separation on the suction side of splitter blade, the pressure coefficient distributions on blade surface can achieve an evident amelioration when the trailing edge of splitter blade toward the suction side of the main blade is mounted at an appropriate position.


Author(s):  
Ning Zhang ◽  
Minguan Yang ◽  
Bo Gao ◽  
Zhong Li ◽  
Dan Ni

In centrifugal pump, due to intense rotor-stator interaction, high amplitude pressure pulsating would be induced, and it has a crucial influence on the stable operating of the pump. In this paper, a low specific speed centrifugal pump is investigated to illustrate unsteady flow within the centrifugal pump. Pressure pulsation signals are attained by mounting 20 monitoring points along the spiral volute, covering all the interested region of the model pump. FFT (Fast Fourier Transform algorithm) is applied to analyze the time-domain pressure signals. Results show that in pressure spectra, evident peaks at blade passing frequency fBPF together with its high harmonics can be identified, and the amplitudes are closely associated with operating conditions of the model pump and the positions of the monitoring points. At nominal flow rate, four vortical regions with high amplitude are captured inside the model pump. And the unsteady vortical structure at the near tongue region is related to the relative position of the impeller with respect to the tongue, and the upstream effect of the volute tongue significantly affects the vorticity distribution on the blade pressure side. At off-design conditions, the interaction pattern between the vortical structure and the volute tongue is significantly affected compared with that at the rated condition, as to the upstream effect of the tongue. At high flow rate, partial vortex would separate from the main vortex, but at low flow rate, the cutting and impingement effects of the tongue are much weaker due to almost all the vortex moving to the narrow side of the tongue. Based on the analysis of rotor-stator interaction in the model pump, some conclusions could be obtained. Pressure amplitudes at fBPF are associated with the positions of monitoring points and operating conditions of the model pump. Vorticity magnitude at blade exit increases as the impeller passes the volute tongue. And the fluid-dynamic blade-volute interaction is dominated by the vorticity shedding from blade trailing edge and their impingement on the volute tongue with subsequent cutting and distortion. And high pressure amplitude is generated with the corresponding high vorticity magnitude observed. So the intense interaction between flow structures (jet-wake pattern) and volute tongue is crucial to unsteady pressure pulsation. Thus, to lower pressure pulsation amplitude and fluid dynamic forces, controlling the vortical structure at blade trailing edge is an effective method.


Author(s):  
Dong Liang ◽  
Zhao Yuqi ◽  
Liu Houlin ◽  
Dai Cui ◽  
Gradov D Vladimirovich ◽  
...  

In this research, super-low specific speed centrifugal pump ( ns = 25, Chinese units: ns = 3.6 nQ1/2/ H3/4) is studied. The effect of the front streamline wrapping angles variation (135°, 139° and 145°) of the turbine on energy performance is considered. The pressure pulsation, interior and exterior noise characteristics and the performance of the impeller are thoroughly evaluated both experimentally and numerically. The pump has been modeled by means of computational fluid dynamics code of commercial software ANSYS CFX 11.0 to estimate energy performance and pressure pulsation. Boundary element method and finite element method are used to investigate the interior and exterior noise characteristics of the centrifugal pump by varying the front sweep angle. The front sweep angle variation was found to have insignificant influence on centrifugal pump performance characteristics. However, it influences fluid hydrodynamics around the volute tongue. In addition, the decreasing of the front streamline sweep angle slightly reduces the sound pressure level for the exterior acoustics, but the radiation distribution of the acoustic field does not change. In its turn, the modified trailing edge of the blades can reduce the peak value of the superposition decreasing the pressure pulsations at the blade passing frequency and its harmonic frequencies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 758-770 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ning Zhang ◽  
Bo Gao ◽  
Bin Xia ◽  
Qi-feng Jiang

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 527-543 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cong Wang ◽  
Yongxue Zhang ◽  
Zhiwei Li ◽  
Ao Xu ◽  
Chang Xu ◽  
...  

To provide a comprehensive understanding of the pressure fluctuation–vortex interaction in non-cavitation and cavitation flow, in this article, the unsteady flow in an ultra-low specific-speed centrifugal pump was investigated by numerical simulation. The uncertainty of the numerical framework with three sets of successively refined mesh was verified and validated by a level of 1% of the experimental results. Then, the unsteady results indicate that the features of the internal flow and the pressure fluctuation were accurately captured in accordance with the closed-loop experimental results. The detailed pressure fluctuation at 16 monitoring points and the monitoring of the vorticity suggest that some inconsistent transient phenomena in frequency spectrums show strong correlation with the evolution of vortex, such as abnormal increasing amplitudes at the monitoring points near to the leading edge on the suction surface and the trailing edge on the pressure surface in the case of lower pressurization capacity of impeller after cavitation. Further analysis applies the relative vortex transport equation to intuitionally illustrate the pressure fluctuation–vortex interaction by the contribution of baroclinic torque, viscous diffusion and vortex convection terms. It reveals that the effect of viscous diffusion is weak when the Reynolds number is much greater than 1. Pressure fluctuation amplitude enlarges on the suction side of blade near to the leading edge due to the baroclinic torque in cavitation regions, whereas the abnormal increase of pressure fluctuation after cavitation on the pressure surface of blade approaching the trailing edge results from the vortex convection during vortices moving downstream with the decrease of available net positive suction head at the same instance.


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