Unsteady Fluid Flow Analysis of Tongue Geometry in a Centrifugal Pump at Design and Off-design Conditions

Document Type : Regular Article

Authors

Energy Conversion Department, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University, Tehran, Tehran, 1678815811, Iran

Abstract

In the present work, the effects of modifying the tongue geometry of a centrifugal pump on pressure pulsations under the design and off-design conditions are carried out numerically by the unsteady analysis of fluid flow. Numerical modeling based on the Re-Normalization Group (RNG) k-ε turbulence model using a Mosaic mesh structure, a technology which can easily, quickly and formally connects any type of mesh for complex geometries and flow regimes, is applied to simulate the flow within the modeled pump, which is validated with the available experimental results. The flow is simulated through a commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software that solved Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations for a three-dimensional unsteady flow. In addition to choosing Qd (the design flow rate), 0.4 Qd and 1.2Qd  are also taken into account as the inlet flow rates. Besides, pressures of 101KPa and 13KPa are considered as additional inlet conditions for this investigation. This unsteady simulation employing different inlet conditions is used to investigate the impacts of various volute tongue angles on the pressure coefficient (cp ). Results indicate that, overall, by changing the angle from 40° to 85°, the value of the pressure coefficient at the pump outlet grows by about 10% where it also causes a rise in the amplitude of pressure fluctuations. By the same token, a decrement to the inlet flow rate up to 40% of the nominal value brings about the amplitude of pressure fluctuations at the pump outlet to be increased significantly.

Keywords

References

Adams, M. L. (2017). Power Plant Centrifugal Pumps: Problem Analysis and Troubleshooting, CRC Press.##
Adanta, D., B. Budiarso and A. I. Siswantara (2018). 'Assessment of turbulence modelling for numerical simulations into pico hydro turbine', Journal of Advanced Research in Fluid Mechanics and Thermal Sciences 46, 21-31.##
Al-badawi, M., I. G. Adam, S. Haddara and A. H. El Sherif (2018), November. Influence of Blade Shape Geometry on Very Low Specific Speed Centrifugal Pump Performance. In ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (Vol. 52101, p. V007T09A075). American Society of Mechanical Engineers.##
ANSYS (2019). ANSYS CFX-Solver Theory Guide-Release 19.0, ANSYS, Canonsburg, PA.##
Barth, T. and D. Jespersen (1989). The design and application of upwind schemes on unstructured meshes. In 27th Aerospace sciences meeting, 366.##
Brennen, C. E. (1994) Hydrodynamics of pumps, Concepts ETI and Oxford Science Publications.##
Celik, I. and O. Karatekin (1997). Numerical experiments on application of Richardson extrapolation with nonuniform grids. Journal of Fluids Engineering 119(3), 584-590.##
Celik, I. and W. M. Zhang (1995). Calculation of numerical uncertainty using Richardson extrapolation: application to some simple turbulent flow calculations. Journal of Fluids Engineering 117(3), 439-445.##
Cui, B., Y. Zhang and Y. Huang (2021). Analysis of the pressure pulsation and vibration in a low-specific-speed centrifugal pump, Journal of Fluids Engineering 143(2), 021201.##
Dong, R., S. Chu and J. Katz (1997). Effect of modification to tongue and impeller geometry on unsteady flow, pressure fluctuations, and noise in a centrifugal pump, Journal of Turbomachery 119(3), 506-515.##
Dular, M., B. Bachert, B. Stoffel and B. Širok (2004). Relationship between cavitation structures and cavitation damage 257, 1176-84.##
Fu, Y., J. Yuan, S. Yuan, G. Pace, L. d'Agostino, P. Huang and X. Li (2015). Numerical and experimental analysis of flow phenomena in a centrifugal pump operating under low flow rates, Journal of Fluids Engineering 137, 011102.##
Gülich, J. F. (2020). Centrifugal Pumps. Springer International Publishing.##
Li, Q., S. Li, P. Wu, B. Huang and D. Wu (2021). Investigation on reduction of pressure fluctuation for a double-suction centrifugal pump, Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering 34, 1-18.##
Li, W. G. (2004). Effect of volute tongue on unsteady flow in a centrifugal pump', International Journal of Turbo & Jet-Engines 21, 223-32.##
Lin, P. F., P. F. Song, Z. C. Zhu and X. J. Li (2021a). 'Research on the rotor-stator interaction of centrifugal pump based on sinusoidal tubercle volute tongue. Journal of Applied Fluid Mechanics 14(2), 589-600.##
Lin, Y., X. Li, B. Li, X. Jia and Z. Zhu (2021b). Influence of impeller sinusoidal tubercle trailing-edge on pressure pulsation in a centrifugal pump at nominal flow rate. Journal of Fluids Engineering 143(9) 091205.##
Lorett, J. A. and S. Gopalakrishnan (1986). Interaction between impeller and volute of pumps at off-design conditions, Journal of Fluids Engineering 108, 12-18.##
Lu, R., J. Yuan, L. Wang, Y. Fu, F. Hong and W. Wang (2020). Effect of volute tongue angle on the performance and flow unsteadiness of an automotive electronic cooling pump, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part A: Journal of Power and Energy, 0957650920915306.##
Lv, J., W. Xu, H. Yin, Y. Zhang and H. S. Dou (2021). Numerical Simulation of the Internal Flow Stability in a Centrifugal Pump with High Specific Speed at Partial Load, Iranian Journal of Science and Technology, Transactions of Mechanical Engineering, 1-16.##
Mahdi, M., V. Sajjadi and M. Rasekh (2020). Numerical Study of the tongue geometry effects on the cavitation and performance of a centrifugal pump in off-design conditions, Iranian Journal of Mechanical Engineering Transactions of the ISME 21, 87-109.##
Majidi, K. (2005). Numerical study of unsteady flow in a centrifugal pump, Journal of Turbomachinary 127, 363-71.##
Orszag, S. A. and V. Yakhot (1986). Renormalization group analysis of turbulence. In Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians, 1395-99.##
Shim, H. S. and K. Y. Kim (2020). Relationship Between Flow Instability and Performance of a Centrifugal Pump With a Volute, Journal of Fluids Engineering 142(11), 111208.##
Si, Q., J. Yuan, S. Yuan, W. Wang, L. Zhu and G. Bois (2014). Numerical investigation of pressure fluctuation in centrifugal pump volute based on SAS model and experimental validation, Advances in Mechanical Engineering 6, 972081.##
Wilson, K. C., G. R. Addie, A. Sellgren and R. Clift (2006). Centrifugal Pumps (pp. 190-226). Springer US.##
Wu, C., W. Zhang, P. Wu, J. Yi, H. Ye, B. Huang and D. Wu (2021a). Effects of blade pressure side modification on unsteady pressure pulsation and flow structures in a centrifugal pump, Journal of Fluids Engineering 143(11), 111208.##
Wu, D., S. Yao, R. Lin, Y. Ren, P. Zhou, Y. Gu and J. Mou (2021b). Dynamic Instability Analysis of a Double-Blade Centrifugal Pump, Applied Sciences 11, 8180.##
Yang, Y., L. Zhou, W. Shi, Z. He, Y. Han and Y. Xiao (2021). Interstage difference of pressure pulsation in a three-stage electrical submersible pump. Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 196, 107653.##
Ye, W., Z. Qian, R. Huang, X. Li, Z. Zhu and X. Luo (2020). Instability analysis for a centrifugal pump with straight inlet pipe using partially averaged Navier–Stokes model, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part A: Journal of Power and Energy, 0957650920919540.##
Zhang, N., B. Gao, B. Xia and Q. F. Jiang (2020). Effect of the volute tongue cut on pressure pulsations of a low specific speed centrifugal pump, Journal of Hydrodynamics 32, 758-70.##
Zhang, N., X. Liu, B. Gao, X. Wang and B. Xia (2019). Effects of modifying the blade trailing edge profile on unsteady pressure pulsations and flow structures in a centrifugal pump, International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow, 75, 227-38.##
Zhu, B., H. X. Chen, Q. Wei and R. Zhang (2012). "The analysis of unsteady characteristics in the low specific speed centrifugal pump with drainage gaps." In IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 032049. IOP Publishing.##
Zhu, Z., X. Jia, J. Yu, B. Li and L. Zhang (2022). Effect of Incident Angle of Wear-ring Clearance on Pressure Pulsation and Vibration Performance of Centrifugal Pump. Frontiers in Energy Research, 250.##
Zore, K., B. Sasanapuri, G. Parkhi and A. Varghese (2019). August. Ansys mosaic poly-hexcore mesh for high-lift aircraft configuration. In 21st AeSI Annual CFD Symposium.##
Zore, K., D. Caridi and I. Lockley (2020). Fast and accurate prediction of vehicle aerodynamics using ANSYS mosaic mesh (No. 2020-01-5011). SAE Technical Paper.##
Journal of Applied Fluid Mechanics
Volume 15, Issue 6 - Serial Number 67
November and December 2022
Pages 1851-1867

Files

Cited by

History

  • Received: 16 March 2022
  • Revised: 13 June 2022
  • Accepted: 14 June 2022
  • Available online: 07 September 2022

Share

How to cite

Statistics