Experiment and simulation about the effect of wear-ring abrasion on the performance of a marine centrifugal pump

Wu Xianfang,Du Xinlai,Tan Minggao,Liu Houlin

doi:10.1177/1687814021998115

Abstract

The wear-ring abrasion can cause performance degradation of the marine centrifugal pump. In order to study the effect of front and back wear-ring clearance on a pump, test and numerical simulation were used to investigate the performance change of a pump. The test results show that the head and efficiency of pump decrease by 3.56% and 9.62% respectively at 1.0 Qd due to the wear-ring abrasion. Under 1.0 Qd, with the increase of the front wear-ring the vibration velocity at pump foot increases from 0.4 mm/s to 1.0 mm/s. The axis passing frequency (APF) at the measuring points increases significantly and there appears new characteristic frequency of 3APF and 4APF. The numerical simulation results show that the front wear-ring abrasion affects the flow at the inlet of the front chamber of the pump and impeller passage. And the back wear-ring abrasion has obvious effect on the flow in the back chamber of the pump and impeller passage, while the multi-malfunction of the front wear-ring abrasion and back wear-ring abrasion has the most obvious effect on the flow velocity and flow stability inside pump. The pressure pulsation at Blade Passing Frequency (BPF) of the three schemes all decrease with the increase of the clearance.

Highlights

Due to the special working environment, such as vibration and corrosion, the marine centrifugal pumps require higher reliability, and performance
It is obvious that the wear-ring abrasion affects more on the pump efficiency and the effect increases with the increase of flow rate, which results in 9.62% decrease of efficiency at 1.0Q0, 10.55% at 1.4Q0
When the pump runs under small flow rates, the fluid leakage from the wear-ring clearance makes the flow of the pump more disorderly, which causes the increase of vibration amplitude

Summary

Introduction

Due to the special working environment, such as vibration and corrosion, the marine centrifugal pumps require higher reliability, and performance. Keywords Centrifugal pump, wear-ring, abrasion, pressure pulsation, vibration In order to study the coupling effect of front earring abrasion and back wear-ring abrasion on the marine centrifugal pump comprehensively, test and numerical simulation were used to investigate the vibration, pressure pulsation and internal flow of a marine pump, which can provide reference for the fault diagnosis of the marine centrifugal pump under malfunction situations.

Results

Conclusion