“AÑO DEL BICENTENARIO DEL PERÚ”

UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE TRUJILLO

Filial Valle Jequetepeque
ESCUELA PROFESIONAL DE ING. MECÁNICA

INVESTIGACIÓN SOBRE EL RENDIMIENTO DE CAVITACIÓN DE

LA BOMBA CENTRÍFUGA DE ALTA VELOCIDAD

CURSO:

Turbomáquinas Hidráulicas
DOCENTE:
Ing. César Pinedo Luján
ALUMNO:

Acosta Alvitres, Andres Anthony

CICLO:

VII

2021 - I
 INVESTIGACIÓN SOBRE EL RENDIMIENTO DE CAVITACIÓN DE LA BOMBA
CENTRÍFUGA DE ALTA VELOCIDAD

El gran problema que existe con las bombas centrífugas de alta velocidad es la cavitación
ya que incluye la disminución del rendimiento, el aumento de la vibración y la
generación de ruidos.

Pero que entendemos por cavitación; cavitación es el proceso de ruptura del líquido
mediante una disminución de la presión a temperatura constante.

Entonces, el objeto de estudio en este artículo, como su nombre lo indica es la bomba

centrífuga de alta velocidad con la aplicación del inductor de paso variable y el
dispositivo eyector que pueden elevar efectivamente la presión de entrada, logrando así
mejorar su rendimiento, porque disminuye el efecto de cavitación.

También se logra demostrar que el fenómeno de evaporación es más fácil de producir

en una bomba centrífuga de alta velocidad en comparación con una bomba de velocidad
convencional.

En este estudio se agrega al modelo un conjunto de dispositivo de chorro que inyecta

una pequeña parte del fluido de trabajo con mayor energía desde algún lugar cerca de
la salida de la voluta para aumentar la presión de entrada de la bomba centrífuga y,
finalmente, reducir el fenómeno cavitación.

Los resultados muestran que el área de baja presión se ubica principalmente cerca de la
entrada del inductor y el impulsor principal. Además que, que la presión mínima del
sistema de flujo es mucho más baja que la presión de vacío abs oluta.

Se obtuvo que las burbujas se acumulan principalmente en la entrada del impulsor, estas
se generan originalmente en las superficies de succión de la paleta del impulsor. Pero a
medida que la presión en el impulsor aumenta cada vez más, las burbujas colapsan
gradualmente cuando se mueven con el flujo.

Entonces se concluye que el sistema del inductor de paso variable y el dispositivo

eyector favorecen con la disminución del efecto de cavitación en una bomba centrífuga
de alta velocidad.
 RESEARCH ON THE CAVITATION PERFORMANCE
OF HIGH SPEED CENTRIFUGAL PUMP
Binyuan wani, Honggui cheni, Jin Jiani, Wanshuang y;2
IScience and Technology on Scramjet Laboratory,The 31st Research Institute of CASIC,
Beijing, China
2Key Lab of Hydraulic Machinery Transient, MOE, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

wanshyi bien@126.com, wanshyi@qq.com

_

Keywords: High Speed, Centrifugal Pump, Cavitation
Performance, Inducer, Ejector Device.
Abstract
In order to further reveal the cavitation performance of
high speed centrifugal pump with fairly low inlet pressure,
the physical model of the high-speed centrifugal pump
which contains the cylindrical inlet flow channel, the vari­
able-pitch inducer, the impeller and the outlet volute is set
up. Here a set of jet device that injects a small part of the
working fluid with higher energy from somewhere near
the outlet of the volute is also added to the model to in­
crease the inlet pressure of the centrifugal pump, and fi­
nally to improve the pump's anti-cavitation performance.
Based on the physical model of the whole flow field of the
high speed centrifugal pump and with the multiphase mo­
del of cavitation, the numerical simulation of the pump's
cavitation flow field is carried out. The calculation results
show that the phenomenon of evaporation is easier to
come up in high speed centrifugal pump compared with
conventional speed pump, especially when the pump inlet
pressure is extremely low. And for high speed centrifugal
pump, the application of the variable-pitch inducer and the
ejector device can effectively raise the pressure right in
front of the pump and thus reduce the degree of cavitation
occurred.
So to some extent, it can be said that the pros and cons of
the inducer directly determine the cavitation conditions of
a pump [9]-[11].
In the paper, the high speed centrifugal pump with the
inducer is taken as the research object. At the meantime, a
jet device is also taken into consideration to help increase
the cavitation condition of the equipment. The fluid of
high pressure is ejected from the nozzles which are annu­
lar type positioned and it's sprayed towards the inducer
blades to improve the pressure there.
Effective numerical methods that are appropriate to the
complex flow in the turbomachinery are applied to carry
on systematic analysis on various flow components.
2 Calculation Model and Mesh Generation
The inducer is a spiral impeller, which is been fix before
the main impeller. The inducer does work to the liquid
flowing through it and plays an important role in increas­
ing the pressure of the main impeller and improving the
pump's cavitation performance. The structure of the in­
ducer and the combination of the inducer with the main
impeller are shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2 respectively.
An Ejector device includes an ejector pipe, an annular
oil chamber and four nozzles that extend from the oil

1 Introduction

In recent years, the centrifugal pumps have been devel­

oped in the direction of high speed, large size and specia­
lization [I] [2]. The inner flow in the compound impeller
of high speed is more complex than that in a conventional
one and the problem of cavitation is becoming more and
Figure 1. Inducer structure and its spiral blade.
more serious. There are still many problems demanding
prompt solution because some of the negative consequences
including the slowdown in performance, the increase of
vibration and noise generation when cavitation occurs in a
centrifugal pump [3]-[5]. The failure of material which is
caused by cavitation will make the pump work abnormally
and greatly shorten the pump's service life which will even­
tually lead to machine being scrapped. At present, the si­
\
mulations of cavitation flow on the pump with inducers
fixed before impellers are still rare. The features of the in­
ducer are: it has excellent suction performance; it can im­
prove the suction conditions of the main impeller [6]-[8]. Figure 2. Impeller structure and the compound impeller.
chamber. The ejector pipe injects a small part of the work­ flow inside the centrifugal pump, taking Boussrnesq's Eddy
ing fluid from the volute to the oil chamber and the fluid Viscosity Hypothesis into account, the continuity equation
in the chamber is ejected through the nozzles. Figure 3 and the momentum equations are [12]-[14]:
shows the structure of the oil chamber and the nozzles. a
The design parameters of the centrifugal pump are list­
. . equatIOn:
ContmUlty . - 0 ( uj ) =
aXj
ed: volumetric flow rate is 4.0 lis, pump speed is 60,000
r/min, the density of the working fluid is 772 kg/m3 and Momentum equation:
a a ap aTu
the number of blades are 8. The structure model of the
(
- p u; ) +- ( p u u; ) = -- + - S; ;
typical flow passage components such as the inducer and at axj ' 8xI ax, '
the impeller shown above are set up by employing the CAD
To solve the two equations above, the turbulence model
software named Pro/Engineer.
must be introduced to make the equations be closed. The
As the wrapping angles of blades of the pump's impel­
turbulent flow model inside the high speed centrifugal pump
ler and the inducer are large and the whole model has
is one with high Reynolds number, this paper use the
complex geometry, the grid division of the computational
RNG k-c turbulence model to carry out the simulation, so
model is completed using the unstructured tetrahedral
the transport equation then can be written as:
mesh which has strong applicability by grid creation soft­
ware say GAMBIT. After the mesh creation, the quality of
grid must be checked. The total cell number of the compu­
ak
at ax; aXj
[( J l
+ u; � = � 1'+ I'T � +Pk -c;
.

17k aXj.
tational model that finally determined is 1.776 millions,
which contains 0.89 million ones in the main impeller,
1.24 million ones in the inducer, 1.42 million ones in the
volute, and the remaining 1.78 million ones for the inlet
ac +u
at I aX; aXj
+[( J l
ac = � ,, l'r � c �P, -c �.
17k aXj
r
+
k
k
k
' 16 26

flow channel and the ejector device in the model.
The figures of the whole model as well as the model
right after the grid's generation are shown below, as Fig­
ure 4.
3 Numerical Simulation Methods
3.1 Governing Equations
In this paper, the two phase mixture model in the FLUENT
is used to complete the calculation. In the calculation re­
gion, the governing equations are discretized by Control
Volume Integration Method. The pressure and velocity
coupling solution is accomplished via SIMPLE algorithm
[15]. The convective term in the discretization equation
uses first order upwind scheme and the diffusion term
employs second order difference scheme.

For the three-dimensional steady incompressible turbulent 3.2 Boundary Conditions

The boundary conditions are given as following:

1) Inlet conditions: The pressure inlet is taken as the
inlet conditions for the passageway right before the in­
ducer and it's set to 50 kPa.
2) Outlet conditions: The outflow is taken as the outlet
conditions and takes the flow rate equals that of the pump's
rated one.
3) Solid wall conditions: The turbulence model is no
longer goes for the near wall region for the Reynolds num­
ber is quite small. So other methods must be introduced to
Figure 3. Annular-type ejector device and the nozzle.
solve the problem and the wall-function method is one of
them. It assumption that the relationships between the near­
wall speed and the distance meet the law of logarithmic
distribution. That can be expressed as:

u+ =---..L =�lg(y+E),/ = p/\"yur ,ur =

U

Figure 4. The whole computational fluid region.
( J�
. T
m
ur k I' P
4) Interface boundary: This boundary types are used in
the surfaces between the inflow channel and the inducer,
between the inducer and the main impeller, between the
volute and the jet pipe. The boundary type is set because
the mesh parameter is different from one another among
each part of the flowing passages. So the Interface bound­
ary will joint each part together.
5) Moving wall boundary: The walls connecting to im­
peller and the inducer are set to the moving wall as the
impeller rotates at high speed.
 In the formations above, u is the near-wall speed, y is bles, the bubble dynamics equation can be derived from the
the distance from the wall, r is the shear stress, and k = generalized Rayleigh-Plesset equation as:
=
OA1 while E 9.01l.

3.3 Vapor Transport Equation and Bubble

Dynamics
where RB is bubble radius, PI is liquid density, PB is bub­
A liquid at constant temperature can be subjected to a de­
creasing pressure, which may fall below the saturated va­ ble surface pressure, P is local far-field pressure.
por pressure. The process of rupturing the liquid by a de­ When neglecting the second-order terms and the surface
crease of pressure at constant temperature is called cavita­ tension force, the equation is simplified to:
tion. The liquid also contains the micro-bubbles of non­
condensable (dissolved or ingested) gases, or nuclei, which
under decreasing pressure may grow and form cavities. In
such processes, very large and steep density variations hap­
pen in the low-pressure/cavitating regions. This equation provides a physical approach to introduce
With the multiphase cavitation modeling approach, a the effects of bubble dynamics into the cavitation model.
basic two-phase cavitation model consists of using the stand­ It can also be considered to be an equation for void propa­
ard viscous flow equations governing the transport of mix­ gation and hence, mixture density.
ture or phases, and a conventional turbulence model (k-E:
model). In cavitation, the liquid-vapor mass transfer (eva­ 4 Calculation and Analysis of Results
poration and condensation) is governed by the vapor trans­
port equation: 4.1 Steady State Calculation Results

where v is vapor phase, a is vapor volume fraction, p" is
vapor density, Vv is vapor phase velocity, Re and Rc stand
for mass transfer source terms connected to the growth and
collapse of the vapor bubbles repectively.
In equation above, the terms Re and Rc account for the
mass transfer between the vapor and liquid phases in cavi­
tation. In the calculation, they are modeled based on the
Rayleigh-Plesset equation describing the growth of a sin­
gle vapor bubble in a liquid.
It's assumed that there are plenty of nuclei for the in­
ception of cavitation. Thus, our primary focus is on proper
accounting of bubble growth and collapse. In a flowing
liquid with zero velocity slip between the fluid and bub-
In the first step, the steady state calculation with the Mov­
ing Reference Frame (MRF) model and without the gas­
liquid two phase cavitation model is carried out.
Figure 5 shows the path line of the whole flow field,
and it can be seen that the flow regime in the flow field is
in conformity with the actual model. Figure 7 is the filled
pressure contours of the pump flow field, the low pressure
area mainly locates near the inlet of the inducer and the
main impeller.
The results of the numerical simulations show that the
minimum pressure of the flow system is much lower than
the absolute vacuum pressure. So it indicates that serious
phenomenon of vaporization happened in the flow process
(the vapour pressure is taken as 4.25 kPa), so the transient
calculation of two phase cavitation must be conducted after­
wards.

2.1�3

2. 08_3

1.97_3

1.86e+il3

1.7 5e+lJ 3

1.64e+iJ3

1.53e+iJ3

1.42_3

1.31_3

1.20_3

1.0� 3

9.85e+()2

8.76e+il2

7.6&<1)2

6. 57.,<1) 2

5.47_2

4. 38_2

3.28_2

2.19_2

1.09_2

0.00_0

Figure 5. Path line of the pump flow field.

4.2 Two-Phase Transient Calculation Results
The results of the steady state calculation are introduced
as the initial value of the transient calculation with the
introduction of the gas-liquid two phase cavitation model.
On the meantime, the vapour pressure is set to be 4.25 kPa
as has been mentioned previously. According to the speed
of the centrifugal pump, the time step of the transient cal­
culation equals to the time it takes for the impeller to ro­
tate an angle of 3 degree. The inlet pressure of the flow
passageway, the speed of the pump and the flow rate are
all the same as those of the steady state ones.
The pressure at the outlet of the pump is 7.8 MPa when
the two phase cavitation model is applied in the transient
simulation. The minimum pressure in the flow field equals
to 4.25 kPa, which indicates that vaporization has hap­
pened during the calculation (The minimum pressure in
the flow field reaches the vapour pressure of 4.25 kPa).
Figure 6 and Figure 7 are the filled pressure contours
of the whole pump flow field and the impeller sections.
From the figures of the pressure contours, it shows that
most zones of the inducer and part of the inlet of the main
impeller zones are in the low pressure district in the flow
field. The pressure drops to the vapour pressure and there
are free bubbles generating and moving.
Figure 8 shows the distribution of bubble volume frac­
tion with the range varies from 0 to 1. Comparing with
Figure 6, we clearly see that the bubbles are generated
right in the region which is consistent with the low pres-
sure regions.
Figure 9 is the filled pressure contours of the impeller
section.
Figure lOis the distribution of bubble volume fraction
of the impeller section. The bubbles mainly accumulate in
the inlet of the impeller. The bubbles originally generate
at the suck surfaces of the impeller blade, and then they
develop towards the direction of the outlet of liquid flow.
As the pressure in the impeller becomes higher and higher,
the bubbles gradually collapse when they move about with
the liquid flow. In the same radius of the impeller, the
bubble volume fraction on the surface of the blade suction
is larger than that in the pressure surface. Further more in
the flow channel formed by the 8 blades the bubble vol­
ume fraction shows different distribution, and it can be
judged that this is caused by the asymmetry of the assem­
bly of inducer and impeller.
Figure 11 is the filled pressure contours of the jet de­
vice. The pressure of the eject pipe shows a gradually de­
creasing trend from the end near the volute to the other
end of the oil chamber.
5 Summary
1) In the paper, the high speed centrifugal pump with
the inducer is taken as the research object, and effective
numerical tools that are appropriate to the complex flow in
the turbomachinery are applied to carry on systematic ana­
lysis on various flow components. And the static pressure

1. �2

1.26r()2

112e-o-()]

1.0�2

7.00e-+() 1

6. 3C�1

2. 1 0oMll

l.40oMll

4.41e-C2

Figure 6. Filled pressure contours of the whole pump flow field.

1.00e-+()2

9.50e-+()1

3.00E!'f() 1

6.50e-+()1

6.00e-+()1

4.50e-+() 1

4.00e-+() 1

3.00e-+() 1

2.50e+()1

1.50e-+() 1

1.00e-+(ll

� _04e-+(10

4.41e-4l2

Figure 7. Filled pressure contours of the impeller sections.

7.20e-01

6.80e-01

3.60e-01

3.20e-01
I
Z-x

Figure 8. Distribution of bubble volume fraction.

1.3()e-t()2

1.2�2

1.17e-t()2

1.11e+()2

1.04e-t02

9.7�1

9.10e-tO l

8,45e-+() 1

7.80e+() 1

7 .1� 1

6.50e-tOl

5.8� 1

5.20e+()1

4.5�1

3.9()e+()1

3.25e+() 1

2.6Il e-t() 1

L95e+() 1

L3()e-t() l

6.54e-tOO

4,41e-02

Figure 9. Filled pressure contours of the impeller section.

1.00Q-+()O

9.50e-Ol

9.00e--(l1

8.50e--(ll

8.00e-Ol

7. Me-01

7.00e-01

6.5()e-<Jl

6.00e-<Jl

5.50e--0 1

r:..OOe--0 1

4.5()e-<Jl

4.00e-<Jl

3-.5()e--Ol

3-.00e--0 1

2.50e--Ol

2.00e-<Jl

l. 5()e-Ol

1.00e--(l1

5.00e--(l 2

O.OOe-t()O

Figure to. Distribution of bubble volume fraction of the impeller section.

x-\

Figure 1 1. Filled pressure contours of the jet device.

distribution, the velocity distribution and the change law
of bubble volume fraction distribution in impeller flow are
displayed visually.
2) The tendency of pressure changes in the centrifugal
pump is analysed as the following: There exists a low pres­
sure region after the suction surfaces of the impeller blade
where the incipient cavitation phenomenon is taking place;
[n the same radius of the impeller, the pressure on the
working surface of the blade is larger than that on the suc­
tion surface of the blade.
3) Seeing from the figure of the distribution of bubble
volume fraction, we find that the bubble first generates
near the suck surfaces of the impeller blades, it then dif­
fuses towards the outlet directions. The bubble volume frac­
tion becomes less and less as it moves with the liquid flow­
ing inside the impeller.
4) It indicates that there exists vortex velocity near the
inlet of the impeller by analyzing the distribution of the
velocity. And the vortex motion brings down the local
pressure there and leads to the negative pressure condi­
tions nearby and fmally results in incipient cavitation phe­
nomenon.
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, the funded project from the Science
and Technology on Scramjet Laboratory is to be appreci­
ated.
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