Abstract
The pumping station became widely used in many fields. Free surface vortices at intakes of pumps are not favorable. It may cause noise, excessive vibration, damage to the pumping structure, reduction in efficiency and flow for hydro-turbines, etc. One of the important problems encountered during the pump intake design is the depth of submergence and other design parameters to avoid strong free-surface vortices formation. This study aims to compute the critical submergence depth with some geometrical and hydraulic limitations by using Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) package. The mathematical model was validated with a laboratory model that had been conducted. The model of three intake pipes was investigated under five different submergence depth (S), three different spaces between intake pipes (b), and five different suction velocities (v). The results showed the best operation cases when the space between intake pipes (b) equal to 4D, the submergence depth of water is equal or greater than 1.25 from the bell mouth diameter of intake pipe (D), and the suction velocity less than 2 m/s. The worst case was when the space between the suction pipe (b) was (2D), in this case, the vortex appeared at submergence depth (S/D = 2) with suction velocity 3 m/s.
Highlights
Pumps are widely used in providing us with drinking water, industrial water supply, agriculture irrigation, city drainage and drawing water from rivers reservoirs, etc
They are based on evaluating the equation by (Gulliver and Rindels, 1987) for vertically flowing intakes, and they did a refinement for this equation, and the proposed equation takes advantage of the relatively consistent and confirmed intake geometry in the vicinity of the pumps for designing with standards. (Kleynhans, 2012) worked on an experimental hydraulic model to investigate the critical submergence for pump intake
He concluded that critical submergence should be based on the surface vortices Type 2, which is called surface dimples according to the American National Standard for pump intake (ANSI/Hydraulic Institute (HI) 9.8), because the vortices Type 3 is a difficult associated with identifying in the experimental hydraulic model
Summary
Pumps are widely used in providing us with drinking water, industrial water supply, agriculture irrigation, city drainage and drawing water from rivers reservoirs, etc. The review of literature that carried out to avoid surface vortices showed that (Werth and Frizzell, 2009) studied some experimental hydraulic models of vertical turbine pump sumps They used these models to evaluate the existing empirical equations to help the designers in determining the minimum submergence required and prevent the formation of a surface vortex. The results showed that the formation of free surface and subsurface vortices were mainly affected by flow velocity, followed by pipe spacing, back wall distance, and submergence, and to less influenced by the clearance to the floor (z) They introduced formula to determine the critical submergence as a relation with geometrical and hydraulic parameters. This study aimed to apply the CFD code in studying the influence of using three suction pipes and the effect of the distances between these pipes on computing the critical submergence depth
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