Abstract
The influence of prewhirl regulation by inlet guide vanes (IGVs) on a centrifugal pump performance is investigated experimentally and numerically. The experimental results show that IGVs can obviously change the head and increase the efficiency of the tested centrifugal pump over a wide range of flow rates. Although the cavitation performance is degraded, the variation of the cavitation critical point is less than 0.5 m. Movement of the computed three-dimensional streamlines in suction pipe and impeller are analyzed in order to reveal the mechanism how the IGVs realize the prewhirl regulation. The calculated results show that the influence of IGVs on the cavitation performance of centrifugal pump is limited by a maximum total pressure drop of 1777 Pa, about 7.6% of the total pressure at the suction pipe inlet for a prewhirl angle of 24°.
Highlights
In industrial centrifugal compressors, the prewhirl regulation by inlet guide vanes (IGVs) is a widely used approach to regulate the pressure ratio and the mass flow at constant rotational speed
This paper investigates the influence of prewhirl regulation by IGVs on centrifugal pump cavitation performance both experimentally and numerically as a further study of the previous work by
The effects of prewhirl regulation by IGVs on head, efficiency and cavitation performances of a centrifugal pump are investigated by experimental measurements and numerical simulation
Summary
The prewhirl regulation by inlet guide vanes (IGVs) is a widely used approach to regulate the pressure ratio and the mass flow at constant rotational speed. Tan et al [17,18] recently proposed a design method for three-dimensional IGVs with some preliminary study of the mechanism of prewhirl regulation for centrifugal pumps. Their results show that the prewhirl regulation has great effects on the centrifugal pump performance. The quantitative analysis of influence of IGVs on centrifugal pump cavitation performance is presented
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