Numerical and Experimental Study of Hydraulic Performance and Wear Characteristics of a Slurry Pump

The slurry pump is widely used in ore mining, metal smelting, petrochemical, and other industries, mainly to transport fluid media containing large solid particles. Importantly, it is easy to damage the impeller of a slurry pump in the operation process, which greatly affects the performance of the pump. In this paper, a 25 MZ slurry pump was selected as the research object, and the Euler–Euler multiphase flow model was employed to analyze the internal flow characteristics of the slurry pump under the conditions of clear water and solid–liquid two-phase flow. Additionally, the flow characteristics of each part under different flow conditions were studied, and the effects of different particle volume concentrations, particle sizes, and pump speeds on the impeller’s wear characteristics and hydraulic performance were analyzed. In order to verify the reliability and accuracy of the numerical simulation results, clean water and solid–liquid two-phase flow wear tests of the slurry pump were carried out, and the results showed that a high solid volume fraction and solid–phase slip velocity were generated at the junction of the blade leading edge and the rear cover plate, thus leading to easier wear of the blade. Therefore, enhancing the strength of the junction between the blade leading edge and the rear cover plate is beneficial for improving service life and should be considered in the design of slurry pumps.

Numerical study on heat transfer characteristics of swirling flow on dimpled surfaces with effusion holes at turbine blade leading edge

In this paper, we conducted a numerical study to investigate the effect of the offset of the jet holes on heat transfer of swirling flow in a concave target chamber with various dimple structures and effusion holes at the turbine blade leading edge. The distance of the jet holes off the centerline e/d varies from 0 to 2.0. Four types of dimple structure, including spherical dimples (SDs) and oval-trench dimples (OTDs) in the inline and staggered arrangement, are considered. The heat transfer performance of the different leading-edge, impingement-effusion cooling structures is evaluated and compared at a Reynolds number of 30,000 based on the jet hole diameter. Results show that the offset of the jet holes provides 15% higher overall heat transfer performance and more uniform heat transfer of the target surface within the e/d range of 0-2.0. The introduction of the dimple structures on the target surface slightly decreases the overall averaged Nusselt number but enhance the heat transfer quantity due to the clear increase of heat transfer areas. Under the same e/d, the OTD structure, especially with the staggered arrangement, is superior to SD structure.