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Abstract
In this article, a typical submersible well pump was investigated to study the effects of inter-stage leakage on the inner flow field and external characteristics. The whole flow field of the model pump with different seal clearances was simulated by computational fluid dynamics software. The inter-stage clearance leakage calculated by numerical simulation was compared with the values obtained by the empirical formula. The pressure values were recorded with the arrangement of monitor points in the inter-stage clearance, inlet region, and outlet region, which aimed to study the effects of the change of interstage clearance pressure on the pump performance. Meanwhile, a comparative analysis of numerical simulation and performance test of the pump was conducted further. The results showed that the leakage at the small clearance is close to the value calculated using empirical formula. But when the clearance is large, the discrepancy between the simulation result and empirical value inclines. Comparing the numerical results of three kinds of clearance leakage, we found that the clearance leakage could not be ignored in the simulation since it has a large effect on the prediction of pump efficiency and head.
Keywords
Inter-stage clearance, submersible well pump, numerical simulation, performance test, leakage
Date received: 30 October 2015; accepted: 15 January 2016
Academic Editor: Magd Abdel Wahab
(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)
Introduction
Submersible well pump is the main equipment to extract groundwater, and it has been widely used in various fields of industry and agriculture. The clearance of the seal ring of the submersible well pump directly affects the pump efficiency.1-4 The inter-stage clearance of the submersible well pump and the clearance between the seal ring around the level of well pump not only lead to the volume loss5,6 but also could change the pump inner flow structure, which has an important influence on the overall pump performance. However, the clearance size is relatively small, and the internal flow is complex, so it is difficult to obtain the leakage of the inter-stage clearance through experiment. In most cases, the inter-stage clearance is often ignored by computational fluid dynamic (CFD) numerical simulation or only the front sealing ring clearance is considered. Therefore, to simulate the whole flow field in the model pump with different inter-stage clearances, and analyze...