The influence of the flow rate on periodic flow unsteadiness behaviors in a sewage centrifugal pump

To design a single-blade pump with a good performance in a wide operational range and to increase the pump reliability in the multi-conditional hydraulic design process, an understanding of the unsteady flow behaviors as related with the flow rate is very important. However, the traditional design often considers only a single design condition, and the unsteady flow behaviors have not been well studied for single-blade pumps under different conditions. A comparison analysis of the flow unsteadiness behaviors at different flow rates within the whole flow passage of the pump is carried out in this paper by solving the three-dimensional unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations with the Shear Stress Transport (SST) turbulence model. A definition of the unsteadiness in the pump is made and applied to analyze the unsteady intensity distributions, and the flow rate effect on the complex unsteady flow in the pump is studied quantitatively while the flow mechanism is also analyzed. The CFD results are validated by experimental data collected at the laboratory. It is shown that a significant flow rate effect on the time-averaged unsteadiness and the turbulence intensity distribution can be observed in both rotor and stator domains including the side chamber. The findings would be useful to reduce the flow unsteadiness and to increase the pump reliability under multi-conditions.