Flow field analysis of centrifugal pump based on large eddy simulation

Abstract

A pump is a common machine in the building industry and water supply and drainage industry. The reasonable selection of the pump has a positive effect on production efficiency. The IHF150-125-250 centrifugal pump was used as the reference object for 3D modeling in this paper. Firstly, the "simulation-experiment" method was used to verify the rationality of the flow field simulation of the six-blade centrifugal pump based on large eddy simulation (LES). Then the influence of different blade numbers on the flow field was studied in detail. LES based on the discrete phase model can obtain many flow field microstructures and flow images that cannot be obtained by the Reynolds-averaged Navier-stokes (RANS) method based on a multi-fluid model. The simulation results showed that the excessive number of centrifugal pump blades would increase the friction of the blade surface, which reduced the total power at the outlet of the centrifugal pump, thus the head and efficiency of the centrifugal pump were reduced. Through simulation experiments, it was founded that when the number of blades was 5, the centrifugal pump flow field had the best comprehensive performance, lower turbulence intensity, the highest efficiency, and best flow field stability.