Research on Cavitation Flow Dynamics and Entropy Generation Analysis in an Axial Flow Pump

The entropy generation theory is introduced to investigate the effects of different NPSH and tip clearance size on the cavitation flow dynamics and mechanical energy dissipation intuitively and quantitatively within an axial flow pump through numerical simulations. The results indicate that main mechanical energy dissipation of the pump gathers in part impeller and diffuser, and most are turbulent dissipation. Meanwhile, the impeller is the largest place of mechanical energy dissipation of the pump under cavitation conditions, accounting for more than 50%. NPSH has significant effects on the cavitation pattern, which reflects on the field that the areas of attached sheet cavitation and tip leakage vortex cavitation around blades increase obviously with NPSH reducing under the tip clearance of 0.1% span. With NPSH decreasing, high regions of turbulent dissipation in the impeller mainly expands along blades and move downstream, with span S0.98 near the shroud having larger turbulent dissipation. Besides, high regions of turbulent dissipation are mainly distributed at the rear part of the cavity for every corresponding span of the impeller, which indicates that the turbulent dissipation has a strong relation with the cavitation pattern. In the impeller, the unstable flows cause cavity shedding at the rear of the cavity and wake flows near the blade trail induce higher turbulent kinetic energy, finally resulting in higher turbulent dissipation there. Under the same NPSH, areas of tip leakage vortex cavitation and areas of tip clearance cavitation around the tip both expand with the tip clearance increasing from 0.1% span to 0.8% span. And high areas of turbulent dissipation also are distributed at the rear of the cavity and moving downstream along the blade suction side, especially at span S0.98. Therefore, the tip clearance width mainly affects the cavitation development and turbulent dissipation distribution near the impeller’s shroud under same NPSH.