Investigation of the impact of splitter blades on a low specific speed pump for fluid-induced vibration

Abstract

Low specific speed centrifugal pumps are widely applied in the chemical industry and agricultural irrigation fields. The vibration characteristics are of great importance for centrifugal pumps. Apart from rotor installation, fluid-induced vibrations caused by internal flow also play an important role in the vibration performance, and special attention should be paid to low specific speed centrifugal pumps for long and narrow meridian flow channels where secondary flows are easy to generate. In this paper, splitter blades were studied for decreasing the pressure and radial force fluctuations of a low specific speed centrifugal pump at the design point, both numerically and experimentally. Numerical simulations based on the Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) turbulent model were performed for fluid-field analysis. The steady state and unsteady simulations were computed based on ANSYS Fluent. Here, the circumferential location, leading edge location, and the deflection angle of the splitter blades were considered to suppress the secondary flow and to reduce vibration. The experiments show the effectiveness of splitter blades for decreasing fluid-induced vibrations.