Performance prediction model of contra-rotating axial flow pump with separate rotational speed of front and rear rotors and its application for energy saving operation

Compared with conventional high-specific-speed axial flow pump, better cavitation performance and compact size have been achieved in contra-rotating axial flow pump, where the rear rotor is employed additionally to the front rotor to convert the swirling flow to the pressure rise. Meanwhile, significantly deteriorated performance has also been observed at well off-design flow rates with design rotational speed. The rotational speed control (RSC) of front and rear rotors has been experimentally proved to be effective to enhance the performance. However, thorough investigations are necessary to find the optimum rotational speeds of rotors. It may be done by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, whereas it is time-consuming to cover the wide ranges of rotational speeds. Therefore, in the present paper, a fast and effective performance prediction model is established by considering radial equilibrium condition, conservation of rothalpy and mass, empirical deviation angle, bladerows interaction and empirical losses. Experimental and CFD results are employed to validate the proposed prediction model. It is found that the proposed model shows good enough accuracy in predicting performances of contra-rotating axial flow pump under RSC in broad flow rate range. Furthermore, an energy saving application of the proposed model is also illustrated for two typical system resistances. Compared with the traditional valve control under the design rotational speed operation, the RSC method can well modify the pump head to satisfy the system resistance at wide flow rate range with the significantly improved energy performance.