Abstract
Erosion in centrifugal pumps for transporting flows with dilute particles is a main pump failure problem in many engineering processes. A numerical model combining the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and Discrete Element Method (DEM) is applied to simulate erosion in a centrifugal pump. Different models of the liquid-solid inter-phase forces are implemented, and the particle-turbulence interaction is also defined. The inertial particles considered in this work are monodisperse and have finite size. The numerical results are validated by comparing the results with a series of experimental data. Then, the effects of particle volume fraction, size, and shape on the pump erosion are estimated in the simulations. The results demonstrate that severe erosive areas are located near the inlet and outlet of the pressure side of the impeller blade, the middle region of the blade, the corners of the shroud and hub of the impeller adjoining to the pressure side of the blade, and the volute near the pump tongue. Among these locations, the maximum erosion occurs near the inlet of the pressure side of the blade. Erosion mitigation occurs under the situation where more particles accumulate in the near-wall region of the eroded surface, forming a buffering layer. The relationship between the particle size and the erosion is nonlinear, and the 1 mm particle causes the maximum pump erosion. The sharp particles cause more severe erosion in the pump because both the frequency of particle-wall collisions and the impact angle increase with the increasing sharpness of the particle.
Highlights
Transport of flows with dilute coarse particles by pumps is widely encountered in many industries, such as coal and mining, as well as metallurgical and chemical processes [1,2]
The particles are uniformly introduced in the extended pipe from the pump inlet and removed when they leave out the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) zone
The shape of the simulated particles is spherical, and the particle diameter is the concentration of loading particles on pump erosion is e
Summary
Transport of flows with dilute coarse particles by pumps is widely encountered in many industries, such as coal and mining, as well as metallurgical and chemical processes [1,2]. Simulated the liquid-solid two-phase flow in a double-channel centrifugal pump by using the mixture model (a special type of the E-E method) and found that the particle size and concentration have greater impacts on the erosion of the hydraulic components. Zhang et al [8] investigated the characteristics of liquid-solid mixing flow in a centrifugal pump with different particle concentrations and diameters based on the mixture model This model is not accurate when the particles are large and distributed unevenly in the fluid domain. A delicate numerical model based on the CFD-DEM coupling is developed for modeling the dilute particle-laden flow and resulting erosion in a centrifugal. A delicate numerical model based on the CFD-DEM coupling is developed for modeling the dilute particle-laden flow and resulting erosion in a centrifugal pump.
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