Unsteady flow in the vaned diffuser of a low specific speed centrifugal pump with an unshrouded impeller

The unsteady internal flow in a low specific speed centrifugal pump was experimentally and numerically investigated. Unshrouded impellers enable high head designs but on the other hand, they exhibit complicated internal flow and an efficiency decline compared to shrouded impellers. Furthermore, the complicated impeller outlet flow induces unsteady internal flow in the vaned diffuser. Therefore, a detailed investigation of the internal flow is required in order to increase the efficiency of these low specific speed centrifugal pumps. The aims of this paper are to clarify the loss mechanisms in the impeller and to investigate the effect of impeller outlet flow to the diffuser internal flow at the design point. The detailed pump internal flow is investigated using unsteady computation, which enables the computation of the 3D flow pattern. The reversed flow and the secondary flow are induced by the tip leakage flow, and this creates a high loss region in the blade-to-blade region. On the other hand, the mixing effect is remarkable at the impeller outlet, and this affects the creation of the wake. This flow behavior makes the internal flow of the diffuser unsteady and the diffuser performance fluctuates due to the impeller wake at the design point.