The influence of ring clearance on the performance of a double-suction centrifugal pump

Due to the complex structure of a double-suction pump's suction chamber, the flow in the pump's cavity is often ignored in numerical simulations because of difficulties in structured hexahedral meshing. However, the wear ring clearance interlinking the pump chamber leads the fluid at the impeller inlet directly to the impeller area. This significantly impacts the pump's internal flow field, so the influence of the clearance on the internal flow of a double-suction pump cannot be ignored. This paper develops four three-dimensional double-suction pump models with different wear ring clearances to investigate their influence on pump performance, and structured hexahedral meshes were used for all the computational domains. The clearances varied from 0.2 to 0.5 mm in 0.1 mm increments. The influences of the clearance on the energy loss, external characteristics, and internal flow field distribution of the pump were simulated via a verified computational fluid dynamics method. The results show that the wear ring leakage decreases with the flow rate and increases with wear ring clearance. The increase in backflow leads to an internal flow disorder inside the impeller, resulting in a decreased head and efficiency. Energy loss is mainly caused by increasing the turbulence entropy production with an increasing wear ring clearance. Also, the low-pressure region in the pump cavity expands to the volute with increasing clearance, and the impeller outlet pressure decreases. This study's research on wear ring clearance provides a reference for the design and application of double-suction centrifugal pumps.