Numerical investigations on effect of wear-ring clearance on performance of a submersible well pump

Weidong Shi,Desheng Zhang,Daoxing Ye,Qihua Zhang,Xiongfa Gao

doi:10.1177/1687814017704155

Weidong Shi, Desheng Zhang + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/1687814017704155

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Abstract

A typical submersible well pump was investigated in this article. The whole flow field of submersible well pump was numerically simulated by computational fluid dynamics software. The influence of clearance of wear-rings on the external characteristic and internal flow field was analyzed through comparing the calculation results with experimental results. The result of the numerical simulation shows that changing clearance of front wear-ring has a greater impact on pump performances than changing clearance of back wear-ring, and the head and efficiency of pump decrease with the increase in the size of clearance. Especially when the size of clearance is larger than 0.5 mm, decreasing becomes more obvious. When the front and back wear-ring size of the clearance comes to 1.0 mm, the efficiency decreases from the highest point of 75.31% to 65.44% at rated flow, and the head of pump decreases about 3.5 m. When the size of clearance is 0.2 mm, reverse-flow will appear in the front shroud cavity of the impeller, and leakage from back wear-ring through the balance hole into the impeller, which has a little influence on the flow field of the impeller inlet.

Highlights

Submersible well pumps are the main equipments to extract groundwater, which are widely used in rural areas, factories, mines, tap-water company, geological exploration, oil, and other geothermal fields
Because when the wear-ring clearance increases to a certain degree, larger volume will result in a drop in the performance, larger leakage flow impacts the inlet area of the impeller and balances the hole area of the impeller channel, the flow field of these area is disordered, and the hydraulic loss increases
The leakage increased with the increasing sizes of wear-ring clearance; the flow through the balance hole has a greater impact on flow field of the impeller back shroud, and the flow field inside the impeller is disordered and has great hydraulic loss

Summary

Introduction

Submersible well pumps are the main equipments to extract groundwater, which are widely used in rural areas, factories, mines, tap-water company, geological exploration, oil, and other geothermal fields. Because when the wear-ring clearance increases to a certain degree, larger volume will result in a drop in the performance, larger leakage flow impacts the inlet area of the impeller and balances the hole area of the impeller channel, the flow field of these area is disordered, and the hydraulic loss increases.

Results

Conclusion