Numerical Investigation of Flow Field Behaviour and Pressure Fluctuations within an Axial Flow Pump under Transient Flow Pattern Based on CFD Analysis Method

Abstract

In this present work, CFD numerical method is applied to analyses the flow field in an axial flow pump qualitative and quantitative analyses. Qualitative analysis for these parameters comprise static pressure variations, dynamic pressure variations, velocity magnitude, turbulent kinetic energy, shear stress. Quantitative analysis including the pressure fluctuations in frequency domain analysis under different operation conditions. Also, sliding mesh method and turbulence model type k-epsilon are used. Various monitoring points are stalled in order to analyses pressure fluctuation mechanism in the impeller blade. The numerical results revealed that the flow field for pressure and velocity are increase start from the suction side of the pump to discharge side. Also, the results found that the high pressure occurs at the discharge side along the axial direction of the impeller. The maximum value of pressure fluctuations is occurred at tip blade region due to high interaction flow at this particular area. Moreover, the pressure decreases as flow rate in the pump increases. Additionally, the results shown that the pressure fluctuations have four peaks and four valleys the similar impeller blades number. Furthermore, there are different positive and negative pressure regions, the negative pressure area occurs due to lower pressure zone at inlet impeller area and hence which can lead to cause occurrence of cavitation in this specific area. The current numerical demonstration results can help the researches for further axial flow pump design.