Assessment of Noise Signature for a Cavitating Centrifugal Pump

Abstract

In recent days, sophisticated instruments have emerged to obtain an online measurement of performance parameters from centrifugal pump of different kinds and the signals can be directed to the hands of pump user through mobile application. With this in mind, a centrifugal pump of low specific speed was chosen for cavitation studies from 80% to 120% of flow rate and for three different speeds. An assessment was carried out for cavitation noise signature from those operating condition of pumps. The result of cavitation noise based on peak magnitude as well as average of noise revealed a nature and it depends on the flow rate with respect to nominal flow rate. The noise envelope for the flow rate at best efficiency and above was having similar trend whereas at flows less than duty point it was totally different. So the criteria for finding the deviation in noise cannot be uniform for all flow rates. In this paper, the method adapted was to impose a trend line to the measured cavitation noise information to find out the deviation with respect to normal operating condition. It was concluded that detection of abnormality in pumps due to cavitation effects requires the operating condition to be diagnosed first and the proper criteria for deviation in noise has to be imposed.