Abstract
In this article, a typical submersible well pump was investigated to study the effects of inter-stage leakage on the inner flow field and external characteristics. The whole flow field of the model pump with different seal clearances was simulated by computational fluid dynamics software. The inter-stage clearance leakage calculated by numerical simulation was compared with the values obtained by the empirical formula. The pressure values were recorded with the arrangement of monitor points in the inter-stage clearance, inlet region, and outlet region, which aimed to study the effects of the change of inter-stage clearance pressure on the pump performance. Meanwhile, a comparative analysis of numerical simulation and performance test of the pump was conducted further. The results showed that the leakage at the small clearance is close to the value calculated using empirical formula. But when the clearance is large, the discrepancy between the simulation result and empirical value inclines. Comparing the numerical results of three kinds of clearance leakage, we found that the clearance leakage could not be ignored in the simulation since it has a large effect on the prediction of pump efficiency and head.
Highlights
Submersible well pump is the main equipment to extract groundwater, and it has been widely used in various fields of industry and agriculture
The pump clearance leakage flows through the impeller, which means the leakage is volume loss, and the pressure drop between inter-stage seal clearances will be used to approximate the value of single-stage head
We found that the leakage obtained by empirical formula is larger than the numerical simulation results when estimating the leakage with theoretical formula
Summary
Submersible well pump is the main equipment to extract groundwater, and it has been widely used in various fields of industry and agriculture. Keywords Inter-stage clearance, submersible well pump, numerical simulation, performance test, leakage
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