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Canned motor pump is widely used in the transportation of chemical industry. The common failure component of the pump is the sliding bearing. The service life of the bearing will be directly reduced if it bears too much axial force. Thus, it has higher requirements on the axial force balance of the impeller. In this study, the axial force and the axial force self-balance position of the canned motor pump impeller were calculated and analyzed by numerical calculation and experimental verification. By deducing the theoretical formula of the clearance, the relationship between the total axial force of the impeller and the size of the axial clearance is obtained, which can be concluded simply to a functional equation. Based on the principle of curve fitting, an iterative asymptotic strategy is proposed to solve the self-balance position. This method successfully avoids the problem that the axial clearance falls into “solving interval traps.” The results show that the axial force is sensitive to axial clearance at a special interval. The axial clearance size decreases with the flow rate increasing. This study is of great significance for solving the axial force balance state of impeller.

Tidal energy is one of the most mature energy sources used in all kinds of ocean energy. Axial flow impeller plays a key role in converting potential energy and kinetic energy of seawater into electric energy. In this study, aiming at the problem of three different clearance inclination in axial flow impeller, the axial flow impeller is studied by numerical simulation and experimental verification. The results show that the efficiency first decreases rapidly, then fluctuates within a certain range, and then decreases rapidly as the inclination changes from negative to positive. When the positive inclination is larger, the axial force and radial force are smaller. Meanwhile, the length of the clearance leakage vortex and the included angle with the axial direction are smaller. This paper provides a reference for improving the utilization efficiency of tidal energy. It also has guiding significance for the design of axial flow impeller.

The blade shape parameters have a remarkable effect on the centrifugal pump performance. In order to reveal the relationship between these parameters and pump performance, a single channel was regarded as the research object to calculate its performance by numerical simulation, and the performance was measured on an experimental rig. The optimized ANN is proposed, and it is proved to be highly accurate. The ANN correlation coefficient of the total response could be above 0.997 after thousands of retaining. The sorts and degrees affecting performance parameters were found out by gray relation analysis. It was found that the blade angles at the leading edge were more influential for reaction force, head and minimum pressure, while the wrap angles had greater impact for efficiency. Furthermore, a multiple linear regression model was established to quantify the weight and trend of the influence of blade shape parameters on performance. The results provide a reference guide for the optimized design of centrifugal impeller to improve pump performance.

Centrifugal impeller has high efficiency but obvious axial force problems because of the axial-to-radial flow direction change. It is easy to cause the over loading of thrust bearing and damage shaft system. Especially in varying-speed centrifugal pumps, the mechanism, characteristics, and influence of impeller axial force is complex. Therefore, experimental and numerical studies are conducted to resolve these problems in this case. The impeller axial force is comparatively investigated by analyzing zonal components, visualizing internal flow, and resolving pressure attenuation law in clearances. This study provides a new test scheme based on force sensors for measuring the impeller axial force. The results show that the variation tendency of impeller axial force is similar to that of pump head. Flow patterns show that streamline-rotation angle decreases with the increase of flow rate in clearances. As the key factor affecting impeller axial force, the static pressure distribution in the clearances can be divided into specific variation stages to specify the mechanism. Specially in this varying-speed case, the blade axial force shifts from positive to negative with the decrease of rotation speed from high to low. This study provides a good reference for solving the axial force problems for centrifugal pumps.

The axial hydraulic force of centrifugal pump is an important parameter affecting pump performance. The force mainly includes the force inside impeller and in clearance. Due to the special structural characteristics of the clearance, the influence of grid discretization method on the calculation of axial force in the clearance is not fully understood. Therefore, based on the Reynolds-averaged method with shear stress transport turbulence model, an orthogonal experiment was designed to compare the correlation coefficient of velocity and pressure distribution between shear stress transport model and large eddy simulation models. A more suitable grid discretization strategy was found by artificial neural network for grid calibration. When the strategy is applied to the entire centrifugal pump, the prediction of axial force has high accuracy. The range analysis shows that the grid node number in the wall-wall direction has the greatest impact on velocity distribution. When the mesh parameters are in a certain range, it can compromise between the simulation accuracy and computational resource. The Reynolds-averaged model based simulation is proved accurate in capturing the complex velocity and pressure field inside clearance. The entire pump model is also used for the verification after the calibration of grid. The typical axial force law can be found under different flow rate conditions. This study provides a significant guidance in determining the grid scheme for accurate prediction of centrifugal pump’s axial force. It makes the computational fluid dynamics simulation feasible in the initial design of centrifugal pump which specifically considers the axial force problem.

For the comprehensive characteristics of hydro-turbine, it is generally grasped through the full characteristic curve map of hydro-turbine obtained from the experiment. However, due to the factors such as time cost, fund cost, experimental difficulty and safety, the experimental results cannot hold onto each working condition of hydro-turbine. And for the specific conditions of unknown working conditions, linear interpolation needs to be carried out through the existing experimental results, which will have a certain hidden danger to the safe and stable operation of the turbine. This paper uses the advantages of neural network to predict the overall operation space of hydro-turbine through back-propagation neural network under the condition of existing experimental points. The results show that the neural network method can effectively ensure the accuracy of the operation characteristics of the hydro-turbine, which can guide the safe and stable operation of the hydro-turbine more clearly, and ensure the efficient and stable operation of the hydro-turbine.

A large-scale, vaned-voluted centrifugal pump can be applied as the key component in water-transfer projects. Pressure pulsation will be an important factor in affecting the operation stability. This paper researches the propagation and spatial distribution law of blade passing frequency (BPF) and its harmonics on the design condition by numerical simulation. Experimental and numerical monitoring is conducted for pressure pulsation on four discrete points in the vaneless region, which shows that the BPF is dominant. The pulsation tracking network (PTN) is applied to research propagation law and spatial distribution law. It provides a reference for frequency domain information and visualization vaned diffuser. The amplitude of BPF and its harmonics decays rapidly in the vaneless region. BPF and BPF’s harmonics influence each other. BPF has local enhancement in the vaneless region when its harmonics attenuate. In the vaned diffuser, the pulsation amplitude of BPF attenuates rapidly, but the local high-pressure pulsation amplitude can be found on the vane blade concave side because of obstruction and accumulation of the vaned diffuser. In the volute, the pulsation amplitude of BPF is low with the decelerating attenuation. This study provides an effective method for understanding the pressure pulsation law in turbomachinery and other engineering flow cases.

The pulsating characteristics in turbulent flow are very important physical quantities. There are many studies focused on the temporal characteristics of pulsation. However, the spatial distribution of temporal states with pulsations rarely receives attention. Therefore, the pulsation tracking network (PTN) method is proposed to track the pulsating characteristics of turbulence. Based on the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation result, the PTN is arranged in a specific region of the flow domain. The fast Fourier Transform (FFT) method is used for time-frequency conversion. As shown in the example of trailing-edge vortex-shedding flow over NACA0009 hydrofoil, important pulsation quantities, including the total pulsation intensity, dominant frequencies, amplitude of frequencies, and the phase and phase difference, can be obtained with a high spatial resolution. The source, reason and attenuation of the vortex-shedding frequency fvs and the 2 fvs frequency caused by vortex-interaction are well indicated. The dominant regions of fvs and 2 fvs are shown and analysed. The propagation and attenuation of vortex-shedding induced pulsation are understood in detail. Based on the comparison against traditional analysis, PTN is found to function as a good supplement for the CFD post-processing by tracking unknown temporal and spatial characteristics. These findings represent a potential breakthrough in terms of solving actual pulsation-excited flow problems.

Hydraulic axial force is an important parameter of the performance of centrifugal pump. It strongly affects the operation stability and the life-time of thrust bearing. Under the influence of flow pressure distribution, the hydraulic axial force of centrifugal pump has mainly two parts. One is the force inside impeller while the other is the force in clearance. In this case, the situation is more complex because the pump operates with varying-speed. Under the influence of rotation speed, pump head and minimum clearance width, the variation law of clearance axial force is still not fully understood. Therefore, the orthogonal experiment is conducted based on Large Eddy Simulation (LES). The local flow and hydraulic axial force in impeller shroud clearance is mainly studied. Results show that the pressure difference between impeller inlet and outlet will strongly impact the pressure distribution in clearance. Then, it affects the clearance axial force. The rotation speed and pump head are proved influential. However, range analysis shows that the minimum clearance width is the most dominant factor. It can somehow adjust the pressure distribution in clearance. The geometric design of impeller clearance will be important in reducing hydraulic axial force especially for varying-speed centrifugal pumps.

Canned motor pump is widely used in chemical industry. Due to the particularity of its application, it is necessary to ensure that the medium does not leak completely. If the axial force of impeller is too large, it will directly affect the performance of canned motor pump. Therefore, the floating impeller could be used in the pump to balance the axial force. In this paper, the relationship between axial clearance and leakage rate at the key part of canned motor pump is studied by means of numerical calculation and experimental verification. It is found that the fitting curve is highly consistent with the calculated value, which provided a good theoretical basis for further study of axial clearance control axial force and experimental axial force self-balance. In addition, the leakage rate increases with the increase of axial clearance. The static pressure in the axial clearance first increases and then decreases with the decrease of radius, and the maximum static pressure value is about 10.5% ∼ 15.8% near the clearance inlet. This study is of great significance to the theoretical research on the self-balance state of axial force of impeller.