Abstract
Deep sea oil resources worldwide possess great potential for exploration; however, multiphase medium technology requires urgent development. The multiphase pump has achieved great success as one of the most advanced machinery in underwater oil and gas exploration. Tip clearance is inevitable between the rotating and stationary components of the multiphase pump. In this study, tip clearance sizes of 0.0, 0.2, 0.5, and 0.8 mm are selected to investigate the effect of tip clearance on energy performance and flow characteristics of a multiphase pump. Results show that pressure rises decrease by 10.72%, 24.96%, and 41.39% with gas volume fraction = 0% under different tip clearance sizes, while the pressure rises decrease by 17.10%, 25.35%, and 38.11% with gas volume fraction = 10%. The dominant frequencies and maximum amplitudes of pressure fluctuation rise with the increase in tip clearance. The entrainment effect between the tip leakage flow and main flow in the impeller strengthens with the increase in tip clearance size; the induced vortex area and leakage flow rate also increase.
Highlights
With rapid economic and industrial development, unprecedented changes have been brought to human life
The comparison of the pressure rise of the multiphase pump without tip clearance and GVF = 0% under the designed flow rate shows that the pressure rises decrease by 10.72%, 24.96%, and 41.39% for the pump with a tip clearance of 0.2, 0.5, and 0.8 mm, respectively
The results indicate that tip clearance has a considerable effect of the multiphase pump on the energy performance
Summary
With rapid economic and industrial development, unprecedented changes have been brought to human life. High-speed photography has achieved good results in capturing tip clearance vortex.[5,6] It is used to study the leakage flow structure and transient evolution at the tip region[7] and measure the turbulent flow characteristics of the flow field. The impeller rotation time is Ti = 60/3600 = 0.0167 s; the time steps of 1.7361 3 1024, 8.6806 3 1025, and 4.3403 3 1025 s, corresponding with 96, 192, and 384 time steps for each revolution, are selected to evaluate time step independence.[42,43] Figure 3 shows the pressure fluctuations on DPM3, DPM4, and DPM5, which are located in the flow passage of the diffuser The discrepancy among these monitoring points is small, which indicates that the time step of 8.6806 3 1025 s is suitable for the numerical simulations
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