Abstract
The head-capacity curves for pumps developed by the pump manufacturer are based on tests of a single pump operating in a semi-infinite basin with no close walls or floors and with no stray currents. Therefore, flow into the pump intake is with no vortices or swirling. However, pump station designers relying on these curves to define the operating conditions for the pump selected sometimes meet the reductions of capacity and efficiency, as well as the increase of vibration and additional noise, which were caused by air-entered flow in the pump station. From this background, the authors are carrying out a systematic study on the flow characteristics of intakes within a sump of pump station model. Multi-intake sump model with anti-submerged vortex device basin is designed and the characteristics of submerged vortex is investigated in the flow field by numerical simulation. In this study, a commercial CFD code is used to predict the vortex generation in the pump station accurately. The analysed results by CFD show that the vortex structure and effect of anti-submerged vortex device are different at each pump intake channel.
