Investigation of Unsteady Performance Characteristics of a Submersible Axial-Flow Pump for Different IGV and Blade Pitch Angles

This paper presents a study of the effects of blade pitch angle and inlet guide vane (IGV) angle on the performance of a submersible axial-flow pump. To analyze the interaction effects between the IGVs and the rotor blades, both steady and unsteady three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations with shear stress transport turbulence model were solved. Hexahedral meshes were used in the computational domain and a grid-dependency test was performed to obtain an optimal number of grid nodes. The performance curves obtained by numerical simulation showed good agreement with experimental data. The results show that the fluctuation of hydraulic efficiency and head coefficient increased significantly under overload conditions as the IGV setting angle increased. Additionally, both the steady and unsteady performance characteristics were shown to be quite dependent on the combination of IGV angle and blade pitch angle, because the relative velocity at leading edge played an important role in the performance under overload conditions.