Effects of sediment properties on abrasive erosion of a centrifugal pump

Abstract

The presence of sediment particles in flows of centrifugal pumps significantly enhances the erosion rate which leads to reduced efficiency and shortened operational life of the pump. To investigate the performance and wear characteristics of a centrifugal slurry pump, the Eulerian-Lagrangian approach has been adopted in this study under various slurry flow conditions. The pump performance decreased whereas the average erosion rate of impeller blades and volute casing increased linearly with an increase in sediment concentration, according to the results of numerical simulations. The particle size distribution, from mono-sized distribution to a very broad distribution, reduced the average erosion rate by 20% on the impeller surface. In contrast, the erosion rate of the volute surface increases by 30% from mono-sized distribution to very broad distribution. Angular particles yield a higher rate of erosion for both blades and volutes as compared with spherical particles.