Improvement of Suction Performance Using Splitter Impeller and Inducer

Abstract

Suction performance is one of the most important characteristics of the industrial pump to keep the pump capability against the cavitation under the low suction pressure condition. Inducers have been developed to improve the suction performance of pumps. They are used for rocket turbo pumps and recently for many industrial applications. It is one of the competitiveness of the industrial pumps to downsize the scale with higher rotational speed by adopting inducer. The authors had proved that pump with splitter impeller with inducer can further improve the suction performance. The splitter impeller was specially designed to be resistant to the cavitation choke. The other very important requirement for the pump against cavitation is that it does not occur cavitation surge. The cavitation surge arises at the partial flow rate of the pump. In contrast to this the suction performance become better at the partial flow rate. So the precise compromise is necessary to satisfy these requirements. This paper presents the experimental and CFD results to improve and optimize the suction performance without generating cavitation surge. The many design and combination of splitter impeller and inducer are tested to get the better performance. The test results of pumps with different inlet flow coefficient are compared not only suction performance but also the onset of cavitation surge.