Investigation of the effects of the vane blades on the CAP1400 nuclear coolant pump’s performance based on a bionic strategy

Abstract

The nuclear coolant pump is an important device that provides continuous power for medium circulation in the nuclear island. The static vane is used as the connecting part of the impeller and the casing in the nuclear coolant pump. The shape of the static vane affects the pump’s performance and stability. A novel bionic strategy is adopted to improve the main performance of operating stability in the coolant pump. Taking the 1:2.5 scaled hydraulic model with high performance as the target, three kinds of bionic vane blades are obtained by the proposed bionic design method of the three-dimensional blade. A comparative analysis leads to the following conclusions: (1) the bionic leading edge, the bionic trailing edge, and the bionic leading-trailing edge can all improve the pump’s head and efficiency; (2) relative to the bionic trailing edge, the bionic leading edge can greatly decrease the flow losses in the vane domain; (3) the bionic leading edge and bionic trailing edge can have a clear effect on the pressure pulsation amplitude in different domains, but the bionic leading-trailing edge can decrease the pressure pulsation amplitude in the coolant pump; (4) through the bionic mechanism analysis, it can be found that the wavy leading edge can suppress the boundary layer separation and the wavy trailing edge can suppress the separation vortices at the trailing edge, so the corresponding performance is improved.