Impact of Impeller Stagger Angles on Pressure Fluctuation for a Double-Suction Centrifugal Pump

Pressure fluctuation may cause high amplitude of vibration of double-suction centrifugal pumps, but the impact of impeller stagger angles is still not well understood. In this paper, pressure fluctuation experiments are carried out for five impeller configurations with different stagger angles by using the same test rig system. Results show that the stagger angles exert negligible effects on the characteristics of head and efficiency. The distributions of pressure fluctuations are relatively uniform along the suction chamber wall, and the maximum pressure fluctuation amplitude is reached near the suction inlet tongue region. The pressure fluctuation characteristics are affected largely by impeller rotation, whose dominant frequencies include impeller rotation frequency and its harmonic frequencies, and half blade passage frequency. The stagger angle exerts a small effect on the pressure fluctuations in the suction chamber while a great effect on the pressure fluctuation in volute casing, especially on the aspect of decreasing the amplitude on blade passage frequency. Among the tested cases, the distribution of pressure fluctuations in the volute becomes more uniform than the other impeller configurations and the level of pressure fluctuation may be reduced by up to 50% when the impeller stagger angle is close to 24° or 360°.The impeller structure pattern needs to be taken into consideration during the design period, and the halfway staggered impeller is strongly recommended.

Effect of stagger angle on capillary performance of microgroove structures with reentrant cavities

Aluminum-based microgroove surfaces with reentrant cavities (MSRCs) were fabricated by two staggered ploughing/extrusion processes to meet the requirements of lightweight phase change heat transfer devices.Five MSRCs with different stagger angles between cavities and microgrooves (MGs) were fabricated to study the effect of stagger angle on capillary performance.Capillary rise and permeability tests were performed on all MSRCs and the results were compared with MGs having the same processing parameters.It was found that MSRCs with smaller stagger angles have higher capillary height,and the maximum enhancement maintained by MSRC45 was about 54.84%.However,MSRCs with larger stagger angles were found to have higher permeability.Therefore,the capillary parameter K·ΔP_(cap)was used as a comprehensive index to evaluate these wicks.MSRC90 and MSRC75 obtained the largest K·ΔP_(cap)values without and with the effect of gravity considered,respectively.Although all MSRCs had a higher capillary rise height than MGs,smaller stagger angles (≤60°) seriously reduced the permeability of MSRCs and even resulted in smaller K·ΔP_(cap)value than that of MGs when calculated considering the effect of gravity.Therefore,MSRCs with larger stagger angles (≥75°) may be the optimum wicks due to the good balance between capillary pressure and permeability.

Numerical study of camber and stagger angle effects on the aerodynamic performance of tandem-blade cascades

Jet engine manufacturers and designers are seeking for lighter and smaller type of axial compressors.Improving the aerodynamic characteristics of blades is carried out by controlling the boundary layer.One way to control the boundary layer is using tandem blades.Tandem-blade cascades are capable of using highly loaded stages for axial compressors because they provide more works than single-blade cascades.In other words,tandem blades help to achieve a specified total pressure ratio with less number of stages.Therefore,one of the most important problems for researchers is to optimize the aerodynamic parameters of tandem blades.Changing the geometrical parameters of blades is a method to achieve this purpose.In this work,the stagger and camber angle of each blade are first changed while the other geometrical parameters such as overall camber,total stagger angle,the axial overlap,percent pitch and chord ratio are fixed.Secondly,the overall camber angle of tandem blade is changed by increasing the difference between the stagger angle of the first and second blade while the type of two airfoils,axial overlap and percent pitch,overall chord length and overall stagger angle are fixed.The aerodynamic performances of the generated tandem-blade cascades are obtained using two-dimensional numerical solution of flow.For this,a viscous turbulent flow solver is used for solving the Navier-Stokes equations.In these simulations,inlet Mach number is fixed to 0.6.

Simulation on effect of throat contraction ratio and strake stagger angle on flow field and aerodynamic performance of scrampressor

The design methods of typical supersonic aircraft intakes and shock wave compression technology have been applied to ram-rotor,an attractive compression system.A ram-rotor is of a typical structure including the compression ramp,the throat and the subsonic diffuser;a scrampressor is similar to ram-rotor,the only difference is that scrampressor has no subsonic diffuser.The work was the continuation of the preparatory work.In order to further study the effect of throat contraction ratio and strake stagger angle on the flow field and performance of a scrampressor,the flow field of a scrampressor with a three-dimensional flow path was numerically simulated with different throat contraction ratios and strake stagger angles.Simulated results indicated that the optional aerodynamic performance of a scrampressor could be achieved with an adiabatic efficiency of 0.8413atotal pressure recovery coefficient of 0.8446,a total pressure ratio of 7.14 and a static pressure ratio of 5.17for a throat contraction ratio of 0.6 and a strake stagger angle of 12°.It was therefore concluded that an appropriate decrease in throat contraction ratio and an increase in strake stagger angle could help the comprehensive improvement of a scrampressor in performance.