Numerical Investigation of Performance of an Axial-Flow Pump with Inducer

The interaction of flow through the inducer and impeller of an axial-flow pump equipped with an inducer has significant effect on its performance. This article presents a recent numerical investigation on this topic. The studied pump has an inducer with 3 blades mounted on a conical hub and a 6-blade impeller. The blade angle of the impeller is adjustable to generate different relative circumferential angles between the inducer blade trailing edge and the impeller blade leading edge. A computational fluid dynamics code was used to investigate the flow characteristics and performance of the axial-flow pump. For turbulence closure, the RNG k-ε model was applied with an unstructured grid system. The rotor-stator interaction was treated with a Multiple Reference Frame (MRF) strategy. Computations were performed in different cases: 7 different relative circumferential angles (Δθ) between the inducer blade trailing edge and the impeller blade leading edge, and 3 different axial gaps (G) between the inducer and the impeller. The variation of the hydraulic loss in the rotator was obtained by changing Δθ. The numerical results show that the pressure generated is minimum in the case of (G = 3% D), which indicates that the interference between inducer and impeller is strong if the axial gap is small. The pump performances were predicted and compared to the experimental measurements. Recommendations for future modifications and improvements to the pump design were also given.