An analysis on the flow characteristics of bi-directional axial-flow pump under reverse operation

When the conventional bent guide vanes are applied to the bi-directional axial-flow pump, its performance declines considerably under reverse operation. Regarding a bi-directional axial-flow pump with high specific speed as the object of study, the variation of both hydraulic performance and internal flow field under reverse operation are analyzed in this paper. The results indicate that both the head and efficiency of the pump will drop greatly and the optimum operating point lean to the lower flow rate when it operates in the reverse direction, mainly due to the prewhirl caused by the guide vanes; the shedding vortex is formed after flow separation occurred near the trailing edge of blade, and its scale keeps increasing in the diffusing pipe during its motion until it collapses in the straight pipe, which is the major causes of the big flow loss and significant decline of the performance under reverse operation.