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Numerical investigation of influence of inlet guide vanes on unsteady flow in a

centrifugal pump

Article  in  ARCHIVE Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Part C Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science 1989-1996 (vols 203-210) · December 2015
DOI: 10.1177/0954406215570105

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Original Article

Proc IMechE Part C:

J Mechanical Engineering Science
Numerical investigation of influence of 2015, Vol. 229(18) 3405–3416
! IMechE 2015

inlet guide vanes on unsteady flow in a Reprints and permissions:

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centrifugal pump DOI: 10.1177/0954406215570105

pic.sagepub.com

Wang Yuchuan1, Tan Lei2, Zhu Baoshan2, Cao ShuLiang2 and

Wang Binbin3

Abstract
The influence of inlet guide vanes on unsteady flow in a centrifugal pump is numerically investigated. The independences
of mesh elements, time steps and turbulence models are studied, and the satisfactory agreement between experimental
and numerical results of the centrifugal pump performance validates the reliability and accuracy of the numerical model.
The frequency characteristics of pressure fluctuations in impeller and volute are nearly the same for the pump without
and with inlet guide vanes in the angle range from 36 to þ36 . In the pump impeller, the dominant frequencies are
mainly the rotational frequency fi (24.17 Hz) or 2fi, and in volute they are the blade passing frequency fBPF (145 Hz). For
the large inlet guide vanes angles of 60 and þ60 , the maximum amplitudes of pressure fluctuations in pump impeller
and volute are stronger than that in pump without inlet guide vanes. Therefore, the influence of inlet guide vanes on
unsteady flow in the centrifugal pump is slight when the inlet guide vanes angles are regulated in a suitable region.

Keywords
Centrifugal pump, inlet guide vanes, pressure fluctuations, frequency characteristics

Date received: 6 March 2014; accepted: 8 January 2014

impeller and vane diffuser in a centrifugal pump.

Introduction Guo and Okamoto11 simultaneously measured the
The inlet guide vanes (IGVs) are widely used in oper- radial fluid force acting on impeller, pressure fluctu-
ation adjustment of centrifugal compressors in most ations in volute and vibration of shaft, in order to
engineering applications, especially in the case of a reveal their relationship with RSI, and then presented
slight pressure variation while maintaining the same an equation according to experimental results to pre-
rotational speed.1 Many works have been carried out dict frequency components. Rodriguez et al.12 pre-
to investigate the influence of IGVs on energy per- sented a theoretical analysis based on Fourier series
formance,2,3 internal flow field,4,5 and unsteady inter- to predict and explain RSI frequencies and amplitudes
action6,7 for centrifugal compressors. in a qualitative way for a centrifugal pump turbine.
The flow in hydraulic rotating machines is compli- The unsteady flow simulation in hydraulic turbo
cated unsteady turbulent flow due to numerous flow machines by using computational fluid dynamics
phenomena, such as flow separation, vortex shedding, (CFD) is an important research approach in the
cavitation and rotor–stator interaction (RSI) and so latest 15 years.13 The CFD results can obtain more
on. These flow phenomena generate pressure fluctu- detailed flow information than experiments, and help
ations and induce operation instability. A large
amount of previous studies showed that the RSI is
1
dominantly responsible for pressure fluctuations College of Water Resources and Architectural Engineering,
Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China
with certain frequency. Arndt et al.8 conducted an 2
State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering, Department
experiment on pressure measurement in pump impel- of Thermal Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
ler and diffuser vane with different radial gaps 3
Zachry Department of Civil Engineering, Texas A&M University,
between blade trailing edge and diffuser vane leading College Station, USA
edge. Hajem et al.9 investigated the detailed flow field
Corresponding author:
in a centrifugal pump under the interaction of impel-
Tan Lei, State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering,
ler and diffuser. Feng et al.10 applied a two-dimen- Department of Thermal Engineering, Tsinghua University,
sional Laser Doppler Velocimetry to measure the Beijing 100084, China.
interaction characteristics in the region between Email: tanlei@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn

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3406 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 229(18)

us to deeply understand the unsteady flow in hydro of IGVs is scarcely adopted in centrifugal pumps. In
turbo machines. Plenty of comparisons14–19 between order to determine the advantage of IGVs for the cen-
computational results and experimental data show trifugal pump, the previous research works of Tan
that CFD is a reliable tool to simulate unsteady et al.21,22 illustrated that the IGVs’ regulation can
flow in hydro turbo machines. enlarge the operation region of high efficiency and
Due to the unique physical characteristics of water improve the performance at off-design condition for
with potential cavitation deterioration,20 the approach centrifugal pumps. To ensure the stable operation of
the centrifugal pump with IGVs, the influence of IGVs
on unsteady flow in the centrifugal pump should be
investigated. This paper evaluates the pressure fluctu-
Table 1. Parameters of centrifugal pump and IGVs. ations with different IGVs’ angles by means of numer-
Items Values ical simulation. The quantitative analysis of influence
of IGVs on unsteady flow in a centrifugal pump is
3
Centrifugal pump Volumetric flow rate Q (m /h) 340 presented.
Head H (m) 30
Rotational speed n (r/min) 1450
Blade numbers of impeller Zi 6 Problem statement and numerical
Diameter of suction pipe D0 (mm) 200 model
Diameter of impeller out D2 (mm) 329 Parameters of centrifugal pump and IGVs
Inlet guide vanes Hub of guide vanes (mm) 40
In the present paper, the tested pump is a commercial
Shroud of guide vanes (mm) 200
single-stage centrifugal pump with six backward
Blade numbers of vanes Zg 6
blades. Six IGVs are circumferential evenly installed
Blade angle at inlet gi ( ) 90 in the suction pipe with the distance of 380 mm21,22

Figure 1. Computation domain and meshes of centrifugal pump. (a) Whole passage, (b) mesh of impeller, (c) mesh of tongue region,
and (d) mesh of IGVs.

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Yuchuan et al. 3407

between the central line of IGVs and the impeller

inlet. The main parameters of centrifugal pump and
Computational domain and meshes
IGVs are listed in Table 1. The prewhirl is defined as a The computation domain is composed of three parts:
positive value when the prewhirl direction of IGVs is suction pipe without or with IGVs, impeller and
the same as the direction of impeller rotation; other- volute of the tested centrifugal pump, as shown in
wise, the prewhirl is negative. Figure 1. Eight computational models are built for
suction pipe without IGVs and with IGVs at different
prewhirl angles (0 , 12 , 36 , 60 ). The meshes
are structural hexahedron in entire computation
domain, and the meshes near the volute tongue,
vane and blade surfaces are locally refined.
To investigate the unsteady flow in the impeller and
volute of the centrifugal pump: 15 monitoring points
are set at the middle plane of the impeller and 11
monitoring points are set from volute outlet to
tongue, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 3 shows the results of mesh independence
examination for the centrifugal pump with IGVs. Five
sets of computational mesh with mesh elements ran-
ging from 2.0  106 to 5.3  106 are taken to test the
mesh independence. Calculation results of pump head
and efficiency demonstrate small difference when the
mesh elements exceed 2.6  106 (see Figure 3). To bal-
ance the computational accuracy and computational
load, the set of computational mesh with 4.3  106
elements is chosen in the following calculations.

Numerical methods
Three-dimensional unsteady Reynolds-Averaged
Navier–Stokes equations are solved to investigate
the turbulent flow in centrifugal pump without and
with IGVs by using a commercial CFD code CFX.
No-slip boundary conditions are imposed at the solid
walls, such as the suction pipe wall, the blade pressure
and suction surfaces, the hub and shroud and the
volute wall. The pressure at pump inlet and the
mass flow at pump outlet are specified corresponding
to the experimental data. The interfaces between
Figure 2. Monitoring points at middle plane of centrifugal the stable domain and rotational domain are set by
pump. using the frozen-rotor and the transient-rotor–stator

Figure 3. Mesh independence check.

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3408 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 229(18)

methods for steady and unsteady calculations, The k–", Renormalization Group (RNG) k–" and k–
respectively. The relative position between the stable ! Shear Stress Transport (SST) turbulence models are
suction pipe and volute and the rotational impeller the most widely used methods for calculating turbulent
remain the same in the frozen-rotor method, while it flow in rotating fluid machines. Therefore, to determine
changes according to the angular velocity of impeller how much difference among the turbulence models in
in the transient-rotor–stator method.23 The results of the present study, three turbulence models are taken
the steady calculation are taken as the initial flow field to calculate the same operating condition that the
in the unsteady flow calculation. centrifugal pump works at the optimal condition.

Figure 4. Time evolution of pressure fluctuations on monitoring point VP3.

Figure 5. Time evolution of pressure fluctuations on monitoring points PM2, PS2 and SS2.

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Yuchuan et al. 3409

Figure 4 shows the time evolution of pressure fluctu- (k–", realizable k–", RNG k–" and k–! SST) with
ation at the monitoring point VP3 for these three tur- experimental data in a centrifugal pump and found
bulence models. It can be seen that the peaks and valleys that four turbulence models yielded slightly difference
of the pressure fluctuations occur at the same time for and predicted the flow unsteadiness at the same level of
three turbulence models. Due to the subtle differences accuracy. Therefore, it is reasonable to choose the k–"
among them, the k–" turbulence model is chosen turbulence model for the numerical simulation in the
because the result of k–" turbulence model is between present paper.
the results of RNG k–" and k–! SST turbulence models. The independence of time step Dt is also tested
In fact, Petit and Nilsson14 had compared the compu- in the present study. Three time steps of about
tational pressure fluctuations of four turbulent models Ti/100, Ti/200 and Ti/400 are set, where Ti is the

Figure 6. Comparison of experimental and calculation results: (a) positive IGVs angle, and (b) negative IGVs angle.

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3410 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 229(18)

impeller revolution. Figure 5 shows the time evolu- maximum time step Ti/100 (about 0.0004 s) is
tion of the pressure fluctuation on monitor points finally chosen to reduce the computation cost.
PM2, PS2 and SS2 for three time steps. The results The entire calculations last eight revolutions, i.e.,
for all time steps are nearly identical, so the totally 800 time steps.

Figure 7. Spectra of pressure fluctuations at monitoring points in impeller for centrifugal pump with 0 IGVs: (a) PS1–PS5, (b) SS1–
SS5, and (c) PM1–PM5.

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Yuchuan et al. 3411

Results and analysis surface and middle flow passage increase from impel-
Comparison between experimental and simulation ler inlet to outlet. However, the maximum amplitude
of pressure fluctuation for monitoring point PS4 is
results larger than that for other points on the blade pressure
Figure 6 shows the comparison between experimental surface.
and simulation results of head for centrifugal pump To further investigate this special phenomenon, the
without and with IGVs at different angles, and the instantaneous relative velocity contour at the middle
corresponding experimental data are reported in span plane of impeller is shown in Figure 8. It can be
Tan et al.21,22 Satisfactory agreement is found seen that a crescent region of low velocity appears at
between experiment and simulation, with relative the middle chord length of blade pressure surface.
errors less than 3% for most of the flow rates and While the corresponding blade passes through the
prewhirl angles. Only at the largest IGVs angles of volute tongue, the low velocity region on the blade
60 and þ60 the error increases up to 6.88%, pressure surface expands across the circle A (see
which is ascribed to the serious flow blockage in the Figure 8) and reaches the monitoring point PS4, and
IGVs region and the complex flow patterns in small then it shrinks within the circle A when the blade
flow rates.21 In the following calculations, the optimal passes over the tongue. Therefore, the pressure fluctu-
operation conditions are chosen to analyze the influ- ations at PS4 should be significantly influenced by this
ence of IGVs on the unsteady flow in the periodic variation of low velocity region, which results
centrifugal pump. in the most drastic pressure amplitude among the five
monitoring points on the blade pressure surface.
Figure 9 shows the frequency characteristics of
Flow characteristics in impeller
pressure fluctuations on PS4 for the centrifugal
According to Fourier analysis, a periodic signal can pump without and with IGVs for different IGVs
be represented or approximated by sums of simple angles. For the same IGVs angle, the amplitude of
trigonometric functions. For discrete signal sequence, pressure fluctuations in impeller for positive IGVs
the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) is used to con- angle is larger than that for negative IGVs angle.
vert a signal in time domain into its counterpart in The reason is that IGVs are designed in three-dimen-
frequency domain. The DFT of a sequence (xi) with sional geometry to generate positive velocity circula-
length N is given by equation (1). tion when IGVs are installed at the initial position of
0 IGVs.21 Therefore, the intensity of prewhirl func-
X
N 1
2j tion for positive IGVs angles is stronger than that for
Fn ¼ xi e N ki ðk ¼ 0, 1, 2, . . . , N  1Þ ð1Þ negative IGVs angles.
i¼0
In comparison of the results for centrifugal pump
without IGVs, the frequency components and max-
The Fast Fourier transform algorithm (FFT) is an effi- imum amplitudes of pressure fluctuations for
cient algorithm to compute the DFT, which reduce
computational complexity of equation (1). The result
of FFT provides the frequency data, magnitude, amp-
litude, phase, power density and so on. Here, the amp-
litude is chosen to analysis spectra characteristics of
pressure fluctuation in pump impeller and volute.
Figure 7 shows the frequency characteristics of pres-
sure fluctuations at monitoring points PS1–PS5 on the
blade pressure surface (Figure 7a), SS1–SS5 on the
blade suction surface (Figure 7b) and PM1–PM5 in
the middle of flow passage (Figure 7c), respectively,
for the centrifugal pump with 0 IGVs.
It can be concluded that the frequency components
for all monitoring points are nearly the same, and the
dominant frequencies are either fi or 2fi except for the
point PS5 with dominant frequency of 6fi, where fi is
the rotational frequency fi ¼ n/60 ¼ 24.17 Hz. The
exception for point PS5 can be explained that it is
close to the interface of impeller and volute and
thus could be affected by the flow pattern in volute,
where the dominant frequency is 6fi s corresponding
to the impeller blade number of 6. The maximum
amplitudes of pressure fluctuations for monitoring Figure 8. Relative velocity contour at the middle span plane
points on the blade suction surface, blade pressure of impeller.

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3412 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 229(18)

Figure 9. Spectra of pressure fluctuations on monitoring point PS4: (a) positive prewhirl, and (b) negative prewhirl.

centrifugal pump with IGVs angles from 36 to significant low frequency component (about 5 Hz)
þ36 show slight change. This result indicates that, induced by fluid dynamics but not RSI between the
in IGVs angle range from 36 to þ36 , the wakes impeller blades and volute tongue.
of IGVs and the RSI between IGVs and impeller To further investigate the influence of IGVs on flow
blades slightly affect the unsteady flow in impeller. field behind the IGVs, the three-dimensional stream-
The amplitudes for centrifugal pump with IGVs lines starting from the pump inlet for centrifugal pump
angles of 60 and þ60 increase obviously. It is without and with IGVs are shown in Figure10.
because that the IGVs working at large prewhirl The streamlines are straight lines and uniform
angle would block the incoming flow and result in in suction pipe without IGVs, as shown in Figure
the sharp decrease of pump flow rate. In these condi- 10(a), but the spiral shape downstream the IGVs in
tions, the unsteady flow in impeller and volute is very suction pipe with different angle IGVs as shown in
complex, including strong flow separation, large Figures 10(b) to (d). The change of circumferential vel-
number of vortexes. In Figure 9(b), there is a ocity component Cu1 in blade leading edge due to

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Yuchuan et al. 3413

Figure 10. Three-dimensional streamlines start from pump inlet in pump without and with IGVs. (a) No IGVs, (b) 0 IGVs,
(c) þ12 IGVs, and (d) þ36 IGVs.

function of IGVs gives rise to performance change of for the centrifugal pump with 0 IGVs, and
centrifugal pump according to Euler equation Figure 11(b) shows the amplitudes of fBPF from moni-
toring points VP1 to VP11.
1 The dominant frequencies of pressure fluctuations
Hth ¼ ðCu2 U2  Cu1 U1 Þ ð2Þ
g at all monitoring points in volute for the centrifugal
pump with 0 IGV are the blade passing frequency
Although the streamlines become spiral down- fBPF ¼ n  Zi/60 ¼ 145 Hz. Generally, the maximum
stream the IGVs, the distributions of streamlines are amplitudes of pressure fluctuations in the volute
still uniform in IGVs angle range of 36 toþ36 , worm section experience more conspicuous variation
which indicates that the flow patter is relatively than that in the volute diffuser section. For the moni-
steady downstream the IGVs. Therefore, the IGVs toring points VP1, VP2 and VP3 in the diffuser sec-
in angle range from 36 to þ36 have slight influence tion near the pump outlet, the maximum amplitudes
on the pressure fluctuations in pump, as analyzed for of pressure fluctuations remain the same magnitude of
the pressure frequency characteristics in Figure 9. about 7000 Pa. However, the maximum amplitudes in
However, the streamlines for IGVs angle range of the worm section vary from the minimum value
60 and þ60 are disordered downstream the of 2850 Pa at point VP4 to the maximum value of
IGVs, which is induced by strong unsteady flow pat- 17,400 Pa at point VP11. The largest amplitude of
tern at small flow rate. pressure fluctuation in tongue region can be mainly
attributed to the particular complex flow pattern due
to the RSI flow shocks, reverse flows around the
Flow characteristics in volute tongue tip, back flows from the tongue region to the
Figure 11(a) shows the frequency characteristics of impeller.24 A sudden drop of the maximum ampli-
pressure fluctuations at monitoring points VP1–VP11 tudes of pressure fluctuations at pointsVP9 and

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3414 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 229(18)

Figure 11. (a) Spectra of pressure fluctuations from VP1 to VP11, and (b) amplitudes of fBPF from VP1 to VP11.

VP10 can be ascribed to the narrow space in this fluctuations on monitoring point VP8 for the centri-
region that limits the propagation of pressure fluctu- fugal pump without IGVs and with IGVs in angle
ations. As soon as the fluid passes this narrow region, range from 36 to þ36 are nearly the same value
the amplitude of pressure fluctuations resume the of about 8000 Pa, and their domain frequencies are all
large value of 8600 Pa at point VP8, because in the the blade passing frequency of 145 Hz. The maximum
worm section of volute the secondary flow is very amplitude increases to 16,300 Pa at IGVs angle of
strong in cross sections.23 60 and to 20,200 Pa at IGVs angle of þ60 .
Figure 12 shows the frequency characteristics of
pressure fluctuations on monitoring point VP8 for
Conclusions
the centrifugal pump without and with IGVs at dif-
ferent angles. For the centrifugal pump without and The quantitative comparison of the numerical and
with IGVs at different angles, the variation tendency experimental results of pump head shows that the
of maximum amplitudes in volute is the same as that numerical model and method are reliable and accur-
in impeller. The maximum amplitudes of pressure ate in the present study on the basis of the

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Yuchuan et al. 3415

Figure 12. Spectra of pressure fluctuations on monitoring point VP8: (a) positive prewhirl, and (b) negative prewhirl.

independence examinations of mesh element, time at large angles of 60 and þ60 due to significant
step and turbulence model. block effect of IGVs. The IGVs in the angle range
The maximum amplitude of pressure fluctuations from 36 to þ36 have slight influence on the
in impeller appears at monitoring point PS4 due to the unsteady flow in the centrifugal pump. Therefore, in
periodic expansion and shrinkage of the low velocity order to ensure stable operation of a centrifugal pump
region, while in volute it appears at the monitoring with IGVs in advantage of its wider high efficiency
point VP11 because of the complex flow induced by region and better performance at off-design condition,
RSI in this region. the IGVs should be regulated in a suitable angle range.
In comparison of the centrifugal pump without
IGVs, the frequency components and amplitudes of Declaration of Conflicting Interests
pressure fluctuations in impeller and volute for the The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
centrifugal pump with IGVs at angles from 36 to respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of
þ36 have very slight variation, but greatly increase this article.

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3416 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 229(18)

Funding 14. Petit O and Nilsson H. Numerical investigations of

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial unsteady flow in a centrifugal pump with a vaned dif-
support for the research, authorship, and/or publication fuser. Int J Rotating Mach 2013; 2013: 1–14.
of this article: This work was supported by the State Key 15. Barrio R, Blanco E, Parrando J, et al. The effect of
Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering [Grant impeller cutback on the fluid-dynamic pulsations and
number 2014-KY-05] and the National Natural Science load at the blade-passing frequency in a centrifugal
Foundation of China [Grant number 51176088 and pump. J Fluids Eng 2008; 130: 111102.
51179090]. 16. Gonzaalez J and Santolaria C. Unsteady flow structure
and global variables in a centrifugal pump. J Fluids Eng
2006; 128: 937–946.
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