Numerical simulation on gas-liquid two-phase flow of self-priming pump during starting period

Abstract: Self-priming pump is a kind of special centrifugal pump, which is widely used in irrigation and drainage, construction, mine drainage, city fire fighting, military, petrochemical industry, food industry and so on. The self-priming pumps produced in China have some problems such as complex structure, large size, difficulty for casting, low suction height, long self-priming time, and the design methods of the self-priming pump have still stayed in the semi-empirical theories stage, which can not meet the demand of predicting properties and the requirement of new products design. In order to know the flow rule, it becomes very important to research the inner flow of the self-priming pump. The self-priming transient process in self-priming pump is complex gas-liquid two-phase flow, gas-liquid mixing and separation performances play a crucial role during self-priming process. The self-priming pump typed 65ZB-40C was chosen as the numerical model. The three-dimensional model was generated in Pro/E software, and the three-dimensional unstructured grid was adopted in meshing in ICEM software because of the complexity of the geometric model. The gas-liquid two-phase flow field in a self-priming pump was simulated in FLUENT software by using VOF multiphase model, sliding mesh, and combined with the rotational speed curve of the impeller and the pressure curve of the pump outlet from tests. The PISO algorithm was used to handle the pressure-velocity coupling, and governing equations were discrete with second order upstream scheme. The model was initialized before computing, set the lower part of the pump for water, and the rest of the pump for air. Gas-liquid mixing and separation phenomena were simulated and the air volume fraction curves during starting period were obtained from monitoring points on the gas-liquid separation chamber inlet, the reflux hole, the cross-sections of volute and impeller. Results show that a gas-liquid mixing layer appeared at the outer edge of the impeller after running, the phenomena of gas-liquid mixing and separation is obviously at the gas-liquid separation chamber inlet, the air volume fraction curve of the gas-liquid separation chamber inlet fluctuated strongly due to the unstable operation at the early stage of the starting period, the air volume fraction curve of the impeller fluctuated strongly due to the bubbles constantly generating and breaking. The results suggest that this approach is good in simulating the gas-liquid two-phase flow of the self-priming pump during starting period. It plays an important role in the further study of gas-liquid mixing and separation phenomenon in the self-priming pump.