Numerical research on the effects of impeller pump-out vanes on axial force in a solid-liquid screw centrifugal pump

Abstract

A commercial CFD code has been used to predict the performance of a screw centrifugal pump with pump-out vanes, especially when changing regularity of impeller axial force based on the solid-liquid two-phase flow. The Unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) approach has been applied to solve the unsteady, incompressible, three-dimensional turbulent. The SIMPLEC algorithm, standard wall functions and mix two-phase flow model were applied. The RNG k ε-model was used to account the turbulence effects. By changing the number of impeller pump-out vanes and width, six different screw centrifugal pump numerical simulation projects were given, and each scheme in the different solid volume fraction were calculated respectively. The change rules of axial force, velocity and pressure distribution of flow field were obtained on the different condition and different volume fraction. The results showed that the axial forces values based solid-fluid two-phase greater than based single-phase clear water, but both changing regularity of the axial force were consistent; as same condition, the same solid-phase volume concentration, with the increase of pump-out vanes number or width, the impeller axial force increased as well. Meanwhile the number of the pump-out vanes and the width of pump-out vanes in balancing the impeller axial force, there are the most optimal value.