Hydrodynamic optimization of trust ring pump and lubricating oil system for large hydroelectric units thrust bearing

Thrust-ring-pump is a kind of extreme-low specific speed centrifugal pump with special structure as numerous restrictions form thrust bearing and operation conditions of hydro turbine generator unit. Because the oil circulating and cooling system with thrust-ring-pump has a lot of advantages in maintenance and compactness in structure, it has widely been used in large and medium-sized hydro-generator units. Since the diameter and the speed of the thrust ring is limited by the generator set, the matching relationship between the flow passage inside the thrust ring (equivalent to impeller) and oil bath (equivalent to volute) has great influence on hydrodynamic performance of thrust-ring-pump, additionally, the head and discharge are varying with the operation conditions of hydro-generator unit and characteristic of the oil circulating and cooling system. As so far, the empirical calculation method is employed during the actual engineering design, in order to guarantee the operating performance of the oil circulating and cooling system with thrust-ring-pump at different conditions, a collaborative hydrodynamic design and optimization of both the oil circulating and cooling system and thrust-ring-pump is purposed in this paper. Firstly, the head and discharge required at different conditions are decided by 1D flow numerical simulation of the oil circulating and cooling system. Secondly, the flow passages of thrust-ring-pump are empirically designed under the restrictions of diameter and the speed of the thrust ring according to the head and discharge from the simulation. Thirdly, the flow passage geometry matching optimization between holes inside the thrust ring and oil bath is implemented by means of 3D flow simulation and performance prediction. Then, the pumps and the oil circulating and cooling system are collaborative hydrodynamic optimized with predicted head-discharge curve and the efficiency-discharge curve of thrust-ring-pump. The presented methodology has been adopted by DFEM in design process of thrust-ring-pump and it shown that can effectively improve and guarantee the performance of the oil circulating and cooling system.