Influence of Prewhirl Regulation by Inlet Guide Vanes on Cavitation Performance of a Centrifugal Pump

Lei Tan, Baoshan Zhu, Shuliang Cao, Yuchuan Wang and Binbin Wang
Additional contact information
Lei Tan: State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Baoshan Zhu: State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Shuliang Cao: State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Yuchuan Wang: State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Binbin Wang: Zachry Department of Civil Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA

Energies, 2014, vol. 7, issue 2, 1-16

Abstract: The influence of prewhirl regulation by inlet guide vanes (IGVs) on a centrifugal pump performance is investigated experimentally and numerically. The experimental results show that IGVs can obviously change the head and increase the efficiency of the tested centrifugal pump over a wide range of flow rates. Although the cavitation performance is degraded, the variation of the cavitation critical point is less than 0.5 m. Movement of the computed three-dimensional streamlines in suction pipe and impeller are analyzed in order to reveal the mechanism how the IGVs realize the prewhirl regulation. The calculated results show that the influence of IGVs on the cavitation performance of centrifugal pump is limited by a maximum total pressure drop of 1777 Pa, about 7.6% of the total pressure at the suction pipe inlet for a prewhirl angle of 24°.

Keywords: centrifugal pump; IGVs; prewhirl regulation; performance; cavitation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/7/2/1050/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/7/2/1050/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:7:y:2014:i:2:p:1050-1065:d:33302

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().