Investigation of Flow Inside an Axial-Flow Pump of GV - IMP Type

The article describes research of fluid flow inside an axial-flow pump that includes guide vanes, impeller and discharge diffuser. Three impellers with different hub ratio were researched. The article presents the performance curves and velocity distributions behind each of the impeller obtained by computational and experimental ways at six different capacities. The velocity distributions behind the detached guide vanes of different hub ratio are also presented. The computational results were obtained using the software tools CFX-BladeGenPlus and CFX-TASCflow. The experimental performance curves were obtained using the standard procedure. The experimental velocity distributions were obtained by probing of the flow. Good correspondence of results, both for performance curves and velocity distributions, was obtained for most of the considered cases. As it was demonstrated, the performance curves of the pump depend essentially on the impeller hub ratio. Velocity distributions behind the impeller depend strongly on the impeller hub ratio and capacity. Conclusions concerning these dependencies are drawn.