A Numerical Study on Axial Pump Performance for Large Cavitation Tunnel Operation

Seung-Jae Lee,Hyoung-Tae Kim,Jung-Kyu Choi,Chang-Sup Lee

doi:10.3390/pr9091523

Abstract

In this paper, a numerical investigation was carried out on the performances of a designed axial flow pump for a large cavitation tunnel. From this, the flow characteristics, force, and torque performance of the axial flow pump were investigated, and the rotating speeds of the impeller satisfying the test section speed performances required in the large cavitation tunnel were estimated. The axial flow pump was modeled such that the impeller, stator, and nacelle were located in a cylindrical tunnel. The calculations were carried out for incompressible steady-state turbulent flow considering the impeller rotating. The performance of the pump was confirmed, finding that the head gain was caused by the pressure jump downstream of the pump. The performance of the stator was confirmed to be good enough to refine the tangential flow due to the impeller rotating. To investigate the operating performance of the large cavitation tunnel, the head loss of the entire tunnel without the pump was obtained from a numerical analysis. The operating points were estimated from the specific speed–head coefficient curves, and it was found that the present numerical results were in good agreement with the experiments.

Highlights

A large cavitation tunnel is a circulation water channel facility capable of controlling pressure and speed to perform cavitation experiments for commercial ships, battleships, submarines, and so on
This study focused on the axial pump of the DSME large cavitation tunnel (DLCT), the tunnel is briefly introduced
Numerical analyses for an axial flow pump composed of an impeller, a stator, and a nacelle located in a cylindrical tunnel were performed by varying the rotating speed of the impeller under the conditions of the maximum and the general flow speeds in the test section

Summary

Introduction

A large cavitation tunnel is a circulation water channel facility capable of controlling pressure and speed to perform cavitation experiments for commercial ships, battleships, submarines, and so on. Since the performance of the pump is directly related to the performance of the test section, examination at the design stage is very important to achieve the operational goal of the tunnel. Numerical analysis is used to examine the performance of an axial flow pump for a large cavitation tunnel for DSME (DLCT). To confirm whether the requirements of flow speed of the test section were satisfied, the operating points were obtained from the head gain of the pump and the head loss of a large cavitation tunnel.

Geometry

Numerical Methods

Pump Performance

Target

Findings

Conclusions