Internal Flow Mechanism of Axial-Flow Pump With Adjustable Guide Vanes

Author(s):  
Honggeng Zhu ◽  
Rentian Zhang ◽  
Bin Xi ◽  
Dapeng Hu

Axial-flow pumps are widely used in many fields where low pumping head and large flow rate are required such as irrigation and drainage, flood control, bio-environmental protection and inter-basin water diversion. Conventional axial-flow pump diffuser is designed with post fixed guide vanes to eliminate circulation, diffuse water and decrease flow velocity while converting dynamic energy to pressure energy. Under designed flow rate the inlet setting angle of the fixed guide vanes is designed to be equal to the outlet flow angle of the impeller blades which is regarded to be the best operating condition. Under off-design conditions the outlet flow angle of the impeller blades does not match the inlet setting angle of guide vanes any more. As a result hydraulic losses are increased, flow separation appeared and vortex generated inside the diffuser, the operation conditions of pump is deteriorated, bringing in bad cavitation characteristics, more energy consumption and lower pumping efficiency. The proposal of Axial-flow pumps with adjustable guide vanes are put forward in this paper, in which the inlet setting angle of guide vanes can be adjusted to coordinate with the change of flow rate and impeller blade setting angle and guarantee the outlet flow angle of impeller blades matching the inlet setting angle of guide vanes. The three-dimensional time-averaged N-S equations, closed by the standard κ–ε turbulence model, are adopted to simulate the internal flow fields of axial-flow pumps with fixed and adjustable guide vanes, and their performances are predicted. The internal flow mechanism of an axial-flow pump with adjustable guide vanes is investigated, and computational fluid dynamics is adopted to simulate and analyze the internal flow fields. Computation results indicate that the value of the highest pumping efficiency is slight changed while the vane setting angle is adjusted when the inlet setting angles of blades are fixed and the setting angles of guide vanes are regulated. Under off-design conditions the flow conditions inside the diffuser of axial-flow pump with adjustable guide vanes can be improved, the hydraulic loss reduced and the pumping efficiency can be raised effectively.

Author(s):  
Takaharu Tanaka

There is a correlation between the efficiency of the pump to the head produced. On the axial flow pump, whose efficiency characteristic is favorable, the pressure head gradient between the impeller inlet and the outlet sections, at an equivalent flow rate, may become larger than that for the less favorable axial flow pump. This fundamental interrelation may be held in the flow passage regardless to the flow rate whichever they are operated at design or off design flow rate. There may be a direct correlation between the efficiency of an axial flow pump and the ratio of the discharge valve cross section divided by the pipeline cross section. The smaller this ratio is the better the pressure head gradient is for the same flow rates. This ratio may be useful to estimate relative grade of heads, pressure head gradients, internal flow conditions, and efficiency characteristics among axial flow pumps.


2008 ◽  
Vol 2008.2 (0) ◽  
pp. 67-68
Author(s):  
Yusuke TSUNENARI ◽  
Akinori FURUKAWA ◽  
Satoshi WATANABE ◽  
Kusuo OKUMA ◽  
Satoshi USAMI

Author(s):  
Pengfei Ma ◽  
Jun Wang

When the conventional bent guide vanes are applied to the bi-directional axial-flow pump, its performance declines considerably under reverse operation. Regarding a bi-directional axial-flow pump with high specific speed as the object of study, the variation of both hydraulic performance and internal flow field under reverse operation are analyzed in this paper. The results indicate that both the head and efficiency of the pump will drop greatly and the optimum operating point lean to the lower flow rate when it operates in the reverse direction, mainly due to the prewhirl caused by the guide vanes; the shedding vortex is formed after flow separation occurred near the trailing edge of blade, and its scale keeps increasing in the diffusing pipe during its motion until it collapses in the straight pipe, which is the major causes of the big flow loss and significant decline of the performance under reverse operation.


Author(s):  
Shuichi Yamashita ◽  
Satoshi Watanabe ◽  
Kusuo Okuma ◽  
Kyota Shirasawa ◽  
Akinori Furukawa

An application of contra-rotating rotors, in which a rear rotor is employed in tandem with a front one and these rotors rotate in the opposite direction each other, has been proposed against a demand for developing higher specific speed axial flow pump. The internal flow field of pump should be considered in the design for higher performance and more stable operation. The flow field in contra-rotating axial flow pump was measured with LDV and wall pressure measurements. In the present paper, the experimental results are shown and the flow behaviors would be discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 1429
Author(s):  
Fan Yang ◽  
Pengcheng Chang ◽  
Yao Yuan ◽  
Na Li ◽  
Rongsheng Xie ◽  
...  

Vertical axial flow pump device has the characteristics of large flow and low head, which is widely used in pumping station projects with head of 3–9 m. In order to study the influence of the timing effect of the impeller relative flow channel and guide vane on the flow field and pulsation in the axial flow pump device, the whole flow channel of the vertical axial flow pump device was taken as the research object. The reliability of the numerical simulation was verified by physical model test. The flow field characteristics and pressure pulsation characteristics of the inlet and outlet regions of the impeller, the guide vane and the campaniform inlet conduit at different timing positions of the impeller under different flow rates were analyzed. The results show that the pressure coefficient distribution of the impeller inlet of the vertical axial flow pump device presents four high-pressure areas and four low-pressure areas with the rotation of the impeller. The pressure pulsation at the inlet and outlet of the impeller is mainly affected by the rotation of the impeller, and the main frequency is 4 times the rotation frequency amplitude of pressure pulsation decreases with the increase of flow rate. When the flow rate increased from 0.8 Qbep to 1.2 Qbep, the average velocity circulation at the guide vane outlet decreased by 12%; there is an obvious negative value region of the internal regularized helicity of the guide vane. When the flow rate increases from 0.8 Qbep to 1.2 Qbep, the amplitude of the pressure pulsation coefficient at the outlet of the guide vane decreases gradually, with a decrease of 94%. When the flow rate is 1.2 Qbep, the main frequency and the secondary frequency of the pressure pulsation are both low-frequency, with obvious low-frequency pulsation characteristics. Under the small flow condition of 0.8 Qbep, the outlet flow fluctuation of seven guide vane was 18.9% on average, and the flow variation of each guide vane was large. Under the optimal flow condition of 1.0 Qbep and large flow condition of 1.2 Qbep, the outlet flow fluctuation of 7 guide vane is 4.7% and 0.56% on average, and the flow change of each guide vane is stable. The outlet flow of the guide vane is mainly concentrated in two guide vane slots of the guide vane, and the flow ratios are 30.56%, 30.14% and 29.16% under three flow conditions, respectively. The research results provide a scientific basis for the optimization design and stable operation of vertical axial flow pump device.


2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Satoshi Watanabe ◽  
Shimpei Momosaki ◽  
Satoshi Usami ◽  
Akinori Furukawa

2016 ◽  
Vol 99 ◽  
pp. 1146-1152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhongdong Qian ◽  
Fan Wang ◽  
Zhiwei Guo ◽  
Jie Lu

Author(s):  
Sang-Won Kim ◽  
Youn-Jea Kim

An axial-flow pump has a relatively high discharge flow rate and specific speed at a relatively low head and it consists of an inlet guide vane, impeller, and outlet guide vane. The interaction of the flow through the inlet guide vane, impeller, and outlet guide vane of the axial-flow pump has a significant effect on its performance. Of those components, the guide vanes especially can improve the head and efficiency of the pump by transforming the kinetic energy of the rotating flow, which has a tangential velocity component, into pressure energy. Accordingly, the geometric configurations of the guide vanes such as blade thickness and angle are crucial design factors for determining the performance of the axial-flow pump. As the reliability of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has been elevated together with the advance in computer technology, numerical analysis using CFD has recently become an alternative to empirical experiment due to its high reliability to measure the flow field. Thus, in this study, 1,200mm axial-flow pump having an inlet guide vane and impeller with 4 blades and an outlet guide vane with 6 blades was numerically investigated. Numerical study was conducted using the commercial CFD code, ANSYS CFX ver. 16.1, in order to elucidate the effect of the thickness and angle of the guide vanes on the performance of 1,200mm axial-flow pump. The stage condition, which averages the fluxes between interfaces and is accordingly appropriate for the evaluation of pump performance, was adopted as the interface condition between the guide vanes and the impeller. The rotational periodicity condition was used in order to enable a simplified geometry to be used since the guide vanes feature multiple identical regions. The shear stress transport (SST) k-ω model, predicting the turbulence within the flow in good agreement, was also employed in the CFD calculation. With regard to the numerical simulation results, the characteristics of the pressure distribution were discussed in detail. The pump performance, which will determine how well an axial-flow pump will work in terms of its efficiency and head, was also discussed in detail, leading to the conclusion on the optimal blade thickness and angle for the improvement of the performance. In addition, the total pressure loss coefficient was considered in order to investigate the loss within the flow paths depending on the thickness and angle variations. The results presented in this study may give guidelines to the numerical analysis of the axial-flow pump and the investigation of the performance for further optimal design of the axial-flow pump.


Author(s):  
Desheng Zhang ◽  
Weidong Shi ◽  
Suqing Wu ◽  
Dazhi Pan ◽  
Peipei Shao ◽  
...  

In this paper, the tip leakage vortex (TLV) structures in an axial flow pump were investigated by numerical and experimental methods. Based on the comparisons of different blade tip clearance size (i.e., 0.5 mm, 1mm and 1.5mm) and different flow rate conditions, TLV trajectories were obtained by Swirling Strength method, and simulated by modified SST k-ω turbulence model with refined high-quality structured grids. A high-speed photography test was carried out to capture the tip leakage vortex cavitation in an axial flow pump with transparent casing. Numerical results were compared with the experimental leakage vortex trajectories, and a good agreement is presented. The detailed trajectories show that the start point of tip leakage vortex appears near the leading edge at small flow rate, and it moves from trailing edge to about 30% chord span at rated flow rate. At the larger flow rate condition, the starting point of TLV shifts to the middle of chord, and the direction of TLV moves parallel to the blade hydrofoil. As the increasing of the tip size, the start point of TLV trajectories moves to the central of chord and the minimum pressure in vortex core is gradually reduced.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fan Yang ◽  
Hao-ru Zhao ◽  
Chao Liu

In order to investigate the influence of adjustable outlet guide vane on the hydraulic performance of axial-flow pump at part loads, the axial-flow pump with 7 different outlet guide vane adjustable angles was simulated based on the RNG k-ε turbulent model and Reynolds time-averaged equations. The Vector graphs of airfoil flow were analyzed in the different operating conditions for different adjustable angles of guide vane. BP-ANN prediction model was established about the effect of adjustable outlet guide vane on the hydraulic performance of axial-flow pump based on the numerical results. The effectiveness of prediction model was verified by theoretical analysis and numerical simulation. The results show that, with the adjustable angle of guide vane increasing along clockwise, the high efficiency area moves to the large flow rate direction; otherwise, that moves to the small flow rate direction. The internal flow field of guide vane is improved by adjusting angle, and the flow separation of tail and guide vane inlet ledge are decreased or eliminated, so that the hydraulic efficiency of pumping system will be improved. The prediction accuracy of BP-ANN model is 1%, which can meet the requirement of practical engineering.


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