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Energetic, structural, thermal and fatigue analysis of heavy duty process pumps

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2016 IOP Conf. Ser.: Earth Environ. Sci. 49 072010

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28th IAHR symposium on Hydraulic Machinery and Systems (IAHR2016) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 49 (2016) 072010 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/49/7/072010

Energetic, structural, thermal and fatigue analysis of heavy

duty process pumps.

A Lipej1, D Mitrusevski2, B Zafosnik3

1
Faculty of Technologies and Systems, Novo mesto, Slovenia
2
SM Pumps, Ljubljana, Slovenia
3
Prometheus, Bostjan Zafosnik s.p., Ljubljana, Slovenia

E-mail: andrej.lipej@fts-nm.si

Abstract. Design of heavy duty process pumps usually based on the end user requirements.
Operating conditions of pumps in the system dictate technical solution to reach high
performance pump design. Pumps for special application like nuclear power plants, petroleum,
petrochemical and natural gas industry should reach very high design criteria and have to fulfil
requirements of different international standards for pumps. Usually energetic and cavitation
characteristics are necessary issues of the development procedure. In this paper structural
analysis that include thermo-mechanical loading and fatigue phenomena are also considered,
because they are very important for estimation of long service life. Repeated thermo-
mechanical loading and unloading which leads to fatigue of pumps are obtained using unsteady
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) with taking into account also thermodynamics
equations. Complete numerical analysis is done for an example of centrifugal pump with the
specific speed around nq=24. The results show energetic characteristics, thermal stresses and
deformations and maximal number of operation cycles for safe and reliable operation.

1. Introduction
Design of heavy duty process pumps usually bases on end user requirements. Operating conditions of
pumps in the system dictate technical solution to reach high performance pump design.

Pumps for nuclear power plants and pumps for special application should reach very high design
criteria. API 610 and ISO 13709 international standards specifies requirements for pumps for
petroleum, petrochemical and natural gas industry.

Apart of standards design requirements, design of heavy duty process pumps for high temperature
should meet a lot of specific design criteria as follows:

 Life time
Pump should be designed at least for 20 years operation with 3 years uninterrupted operation
(API 610 standard requirement) or 30 years operation for nuclear application.
 Operation cycles
Operation cycles depend of pump application and end user requirements.
Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution
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Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd 1
28th IAHR symposium on Hydraulic Machinery and Systems (IAHR2016) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 49 (2016) 072010 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/49/7/072010

In this paper analyses is done for the following operating conditions:

Table 1. Operating conditions

Nominal operating condition No. of occurrences
Heat up and cooldown of 50 °C/h 1000
Power (pressure) increase and decrease with step of 10 % 10000
Power (pressure) pulsation from 100% to 0% in one step 150
Power (pressure) increase and decrease with step of 10% 50000

 Reliability characteristics - critical reliability – probability of failure

Reliability of the pump design should consider the time frame of probably failure compared
with critical reliability.
 Design without pre-warming
Design without pre-warming is possible for pumps with limited sizes. For large size pumps
pre-warming design should provide proper heat distribution.
 Minimize thermal distortion
Design should minimized thermal distortions. Important is to control all thermal deformations,
elongations, radial and axial clearances which influence the pump reliability. All thermal
deformation should be handled for wide temperature range.
 Handle thermal stresses
Thermal stresses should be calculated according to the material characteristics limits.
Using the quality materials of construction risk of high thermal stresses is lower.
 Optimize the temperature distribution and heat transfer
Optimize the outside and inside geometry of pump parts is the key parameter for proper
temperature distribution and heat transfer. In application of heavy duty process pumps we
meet all types of heat transfer and deep analyse of each one will provide the quality design.
 Design the thermal barrier and cooling system
Design the thermal barrier is required in many application of heavy duty process pumps.
Design limits of cooling system should prevent the thermal shocks.

A quality prepared structural analysis, thermal analysis and fatigue analysis will help to fulfil
design requirements.

In this paper we will show the example of complete numerical analysis for end suction pump
designed for following operating conditions:

Specific speed nq = 24
Design pressure 100 bar
Design temperature 400 ° C
Life time min 20 years
3 years continuous operation

Material class selection is C-6 according to API 610 (12% CHR steel for casing, impeller and
shaft).
Forces and moments on flanges are according to API 610.

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28th IAHR symposium on Hydraulic Machinery and Systems (IAHR2016) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 49 (2016) 072010 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/49/7/072010

1.1. Pump flow analysis

In pump industry the development procedure is very important for the competition with worldwide
producers. The results of the new product must be obtained in as much as possible short time. The
development process can be either experimental or numerical oriented. If the numerical analysis is
chosen, the results can be obtained quite fast, depends on the size of computational grids and type of
numerical analysis. In the literature the majority of examples use the steady state numerical analysis to
predict energetic and cavitation characteristics [1]. The complete computational time using steady
state analysis is very short, but the accuracy [2] of the results is not always acceptable if the model test
want to be replaced successfully. The physics of the flow in the pump shows that the flow is
decelerated and have strong diffuser effect. The consequence of above mentioned issues is the high
probability of vortices, back flow and flow separation occurrence, especially near the impeller blades.
In all cases the flow is very unsteady and using steady state analysis, it is not possible to obtain the
converged solution for all operating regimes. The accuracy of steady state results is usually very
questionable.

Another problem at steady state analysis is the usage of appropriate sliding interface [3] between
rotating and stationary parts. Usually the number of impeller blades is quite low and the sliding
interface can have a strong influence on the final results. That is why the unsteady calculations are
necessary to obtain the reliable results [4]. The results of unsteady analysis and the comparison with
the experimental results are presented in the paper. The comparison is done just for one pump
geometry with specific speed nq = 24, but quite similar results can be expected also at different
geometries or different specific speed.

2. CFD analysis

2.1. Computational domain and grid

The main task was making a hydraulic design of the new pump
impeller and spiral casing with good energetic characteristics and
also construction of the complete pump including housing with long
service life.

The geometry of analyzed pump is presented on the Fig. 1. The

computational domain is slightly different because an inlet and outlet
pipe is added to minimize the influence of boundary conditions. The
same geometry is used for all: CFD analysis, FEM analysis and
fatigue analysis.

Figure 1. Geometry of the pump casing

Only wet surfaces of the pump housing, impeller and spiral casing was taking into account for the
computational grid for CFD analysis.

CFD analyses were starting with course computational grids with about 2.5 million elements and
finish with very fine computational grids using more than 13.5 million elements (Fig. 2).

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28th IAHR symposium on Hydraulic Machinery and Systems (IAHR2016) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 49 (2016) 072010 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/49/7/072010

Figure 2. Computational grid

For analysed geometry the quality computational grids were generated in order to find out the
accuracy of steady state and unsteady calculations and compare the numerical and experimental
obtained energetic characteristics for five operating regimes.

The quality of computational grid is an important condition for accurate numerical flow analysis
results, particularly in case of dominant decelerating flow in the pump where the flow is highly
unsteady in majority of operating points.

Grid refinement is very important near the impeller walls. Besides the grid refinement, the special
attention has been done on the grid quality parameter y+, on mesh orthogonality and on expansion and
aspect ratio. In case of analysed pump, the y+ in the almost whole computational domain is between 20
and 50. Just in the very small area, which is not relevant on the accuracy of the results, the y + exceed
50 (Fig. 3).

The computational grid was done separately for impeller

and spiral casing. Special attention on the mesh quality was
paid to the impeller grid generation and this is the main
reason that the number of elements in the impeller is around
10 million in the finest grid.

Figure 3. Distribution of y+ at the impeller

2.2. Results of CFD analysis

The numerical analysis in pump (Fig. 4 and Fig 5) has been performed for five different flow rates
presented on the table 2.

Table 2. Operating regimes

Operating point (OP) Flow rate
A 0.73 Qopt
B 0.87 Qopt
C 1 Qopt
D 1.13 Qopt
E 1.26 Qopt

The important issue in CFD analysis is turbulence model. In our case the k-omega SST turbulence
model was used for steady state analyses and SAS SST turbulence model for unsteady analyses. The

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28th IAHR symposium on Hydraulic Machinery and Systems (IAHR2016) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 49 (2016) 072010 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/49/7/072010

length of the time step is 0.0002 s for all operating points except for operating point D where the
length of time step is 0.001 s.

Figure 4. Unsteady flow presentation with streamlines – OP A, C, E (from left to right)

Figure 5. Unsteady flow presentation with velocity vectors - OP A, C, E (from left to right)

From the flow pattern shown on the Fig. 4 and Fig. 5, it is obvious that the flow is real unsteady.
Inside the blade channels a lot of vortices and also back flow is detected. Flow conditions also
influence on the efficiency characteristics and on the Fig. 6 the time dependent efficiency distribution
is presented for five operating regimes. The frequency of the efficiency distribution is the same for all
operating points, but the amplitudes and the shapes are different. The difference between minimal and
maximal value depends on operating regime and is from 3 % to 18 %.

Figure 6. Time dependent efficiency distribution for five operating regimes

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28th IAHR symposium on Hydraulic Machinery and Systems (IAHR2016) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 49 (2016) 072010 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/49/7/072010

The time average value of efficiency is slightly different from the middle value of minimal and
maximal results. Because of oscillating nature of the efficiency, it is necessary to make calculation for
a reasonable number of time steps in order to obtain reliable averaged result. It is also important to
monitor the convergence of the efficiency during calculation, because if only residuals is monitoring,
the results can be useless.

The complete efficiency distribution for unsteady analysis is presented on Fig. 7, where
experimental results are compared with both average values, minimal values and maximal ones. It is
shown that the amplitudes of the efficiency are very low near optimal operating regime, at part load
and full load the situation is much different. The comparison between the time average values and
normal average values shows that maximal difference is around 2 %. The best result was obtained
using time averaging of unsteady results.

Figure 7. Comparison between experimental and CFD results for unsteady analysis

When the computational analysis is steady state, usually two options can be used, a so called
‘frozen rotor’ or ‘stage’ sliding interface between rotating and stationary parts. From the comparison
of ‘frozen rotor’ and ‘stage’ sliding interface (Table 3) it can be seen that the difference of efficiency
(Δη) is from around 2 % to 4 percent.

Table 3. Comparison of efficiency between frozen rotor and stage sliding interface
Operating point ‘Frozen rotor’ ‘Stage’ Δη
A 0.810 0.853 0.043
C 0.868 0.885 0.018
E 0.852 0.876 0.024

‘Frozen rotor’ solution was obtained only for one position of the impeller blades without angular shift
of geometry.

3. Fatigue

Metal components subjected to fluctuating loading, fail also in case when stresses are essential below
the tensile strength because of cracks initiation and theirs propagation. Fatigue is basically caused by
fluctuating mechanical and thermal loading. There are two well-known approaches for analysing of
components subjected to fluctuating stresses [5]:
- Stress life approach when stresses are usually low compared to tensile strength,

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28th IAHR symposium on Hydraulic Machinery and Systems (IAHR2016) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 49 (2016) 072010 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/49/7/072010

- Strain life approach which considers plastic deformation of components.

In this paper a stress life approach will be considered. The relationship between loading and fatigue
failure is captured with a Stress-Life curve or S-N curve, also known as a Wöhler’s curve. Stress-Life
curve shows the relation of stress amplitude of failure.

A
R
Stress

max M

min

For M = 0: fully
reverese dynamic
loading
 Number of cycles

Figure 8. Cyclic loading [5]

Characteristic values (Fig. 8) are defined with maximum (max) and minimum (min) stress. Stress
range is defined as R:

 R   max   min , (1)

where amplitude stress A is equal to half of stress difference:

R  max   min
A   . (2)
2 2

Mean stress M is half of the sum between maximum and minimum stress:

 max   min
M  (3)
2

Stress ratio R is defined as:

 min
R (4)
 max

Stress ratio R can be for one way dynamic (reverse) loading equal to 0 < R < 1, at zero based
loading is R = 0, while at general reversed loading can be -1 < R < 0. Fully reversed loading occurs
when an equal and opposite load is applied (M = 0 and R = -1).

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28th IAHR symposium on Hydraulic Machinery and Systems (IAHR2016) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 49 (2016) 072010 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/49/7/072010

Stress-Life curves are strongly dependent on mean stress. Different mean stress correction theories
(Goodman, Soderberg, and Gebert) can be used for consideration of different materials and when
multiple Stress-Life curves are not available [6]. This is also important in case of non-fully reversed
loading.

Loading can be proportional or non-proportional. In case of proportional loading the ratio of

principal stresses is constant and the principal axes do not change over the time. Non-proportional
loading occurs when the ratio of principal stress is not constant and the principal axes change over the
time. This happens in case of alternating between two different load cases or nonlinear boundary
conditions (contact between bodies), etc. In presented paper a constant amplitude and non-proportional
loading is considered caused by pressure load and temperature changes during pump operation. There
are several types of fatigue results that can be considered. In this paper equivalent alternating stress is
evaluated and compared with Stress-Life (S-N) curve.

Boundary conditions and loading have a very big influence on stresses and consequently on
fatigue. Adequate boundary conditions used in the model are presented in Fig. 9:

Figure 9. Boundary conditions

Results from Fig. 10 show that sharp edges have negative influence on fatigue because they
increase the equivalent alternating stress.

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28th IAHR symposium on Hydraulic Machinery and Systems (IAHR2016) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 49 (2016) 072010 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/49/7/072010

Considering mechanical and temperature loading from Table 1 lead to alternating stress for non-
proportional loading and Goodman mean stress theory presented in Fig. 10:

Figure 10. Equivalent alternating stress for non-proportional loading of the pump for two Fatigue
Strength (Reduction) Factor - Kf = 0,7 (left), Kf = 1 (right)

To find an influence of equivalent alternating stress magnitude on fatigue a comparison with

Stress-Life (S-N) curve should be done. Influence of loading cycles on properties of structural steel is
presented in Fig. 11.

Figure 11. Stress-Life (S-N) curve for structural steel

Comparison between results from Fig. 10 and 11 shows that pump is safe against fatigue for design
cycles (Table 1) and also for long time service.

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28th IAHR symposium on Hydraulic Machinery and Systems (IAHR2016) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 49 (2016) 072010 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/49/7/072010

4. Conclusions

Flow in pumps is usually very unsteady and that is why steady state numerical analysis is not enough
reliable method in the development process. In our case the comparison of experimental and numerical
results of the efficiency is presented.
Experimental results show only the average values unlike the numerical ones, where complete time
dependent distribution can be obtained. The fluctuations of efficiency can be quite high, depends on
operating point from 3 % to almost 18 % in this particular case. The most reliable results can be
obtained using time averaging of results.

Results of the fatigue analysis show that pump can operate in safe fatigue regime for design load
cycles. A very big influence on fatigue life have boundary conditions. Fixed rigidity of the pump at
connections to other parts of the pump system significantly reduce fatigue life. Therefore also other
parts of the pump system were considered in the model to prescribe an adequate boundary conditions.
Fatigue life was evaluated using comparison of the equivalent alternating stress and stress-life (S-N)
curve where also the Goodman mean stress theory was considered.

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impeller of centrifugal pump using CFD Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 23
(Springer) 1620-1627
[2] Perez J, Chiva S, Segala W, Morales R, Negrao C, Julia E and Hernandez L 2010 Performance
Analysis of Flow in a Impeller-Diffuser Centrifugal Pumps Using CFD: Simulation and
Experimental Data Comparisons V European Conference on Computational Fluid Dynamics,
ECCOMAS CFD (Lisbon)
[3] Meakhail T A, Salem M and Shafie I 2014 Steady and unsteady flow inside a centrifugal pump
for two different impellers International Journal of Energy and Power Engineering 3(2) 65-76
[4] Cheah K W, Lee T S, and Winoto S H 2008 Unsteady Fluid Flow Study in a Centrifugal Pump
by CFD Method 7th ASEAN ANSYS Conference (Singapore)
[5] Glodez S and Flasker J 2006 Dimenzioniranje na zivljensko dobo Pedagoska fakulteta:
Fakulteta za strojnistvo (Maribor)
[6] Ansys, Version 16.2, 2015 documentation

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