The influence of blade fracture on the internal flow characteristics and rotor system of horizontal centrifugal pumps

Abstract

The blade fracture of horizontal centrifugal pump will not only affect the hydraulic performance of the pump, but also affect the safety and stability of the whole unit. In this paper, for horizontal centrifugal pumps, five single-blade fracture schemes are designed and numerical simulations are carried out under different operating conditions. The results show that with the increase of fracture size, the influence on the hydraulic characteristics of the pump shows a decreasing trend, and it will also affect the turbulent kinetic energy distribution near the impeller inlet, so that the internal flow becomes complex and the flow loss increases. The radial force on the impeller changes periodically, and its magnitude shows a nonlinear decreasing change with the increase of the fracture size. The pressure pulsation analysis of several monitoring points in the worm shell shows that as the fracture size increases, the amplitude of the lobe frequency slowly rises, and the shaft frequency, which is second only to the lobe frequency, becomes higher and higher and begins to dominate. A study of the rotor system shows that the maximum deformation of the impeller occurs at the edge of the impeller cover and the maximum equivalent stress occurs at the blade exit; blade fracture causes a significant reduction in the latter third-order intrinsic frequency.