Numerical investigation of pump performance and internal characteristics in ALIP with different winding schemes

Abstract

Annular linear induction pump (ALIP) is considered as an ideal type of coolant pump in liquid metal cooled reactors. However, the low pump efficiency and the flow instability have yet been solved, especially for large-scale pump design. In this work, a two-dimensionally symmetrical ALIP model is de veloped and both single-sided (SS) and double-sided (DS) windings in stators are simulated in the designed ALIP model. The pump performance characteristics (H-Q curve) are obtained by calculating the differential pressure between inlet and outlet at varying flow rate conditions. The simulated results are validated with the previously published experiment. The results show that the differential pressure of the DS-type pumps is slightly lower than that of SS pump with the same input energy while the radial velocity profile in the channel of the DS pumps with the winding number of outer stator twice that of inner stator shows the best uniform velocity distribution. By peeking into the Lorentz force and induced magnetic field, the DS pump with equal winding numbers at inner and outer stators actually deteriorates the induced magnetic field, resulting in a highly non-uniform Lorentz force in the channel radial direction, particularly at high flow rate. The results demonstrate the importance of finding an appropriate ratio of winding numbers in the DS-type pump design in order to improve the pump performance.