Efficiency of 62%: tests confirmed the high effectiveness of drainage pumps developed at SPbPU
Engineers of Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University conducted comprehensive full-scale tests of a prototype of the free-vortex drainage pump (FVP) 160/20 of their own design. The test results confirmed that the efficiency coefficient (efficiency) of the unit is 62% — higher than that of Russian and foreign analogues.
The development is being carried out with the support of the federal program «Priority-2030».
As we have already written, SPbPU engineers, when creating the line of free-vortex pumps (СВН 50/20, СВН 100/20, СВН 160/20), applied digital design and modeling technologies, and in manufacturing the prototype of the FVP 160/20 they used a combination of traditional and additive technologies. The capabilities of the research experimental-computational complex of the Laboratory of Hydraulic Machine Engineering of SPbPU made it possible to shorten the development time of the new pumps up to the stage of experimental studies of the prototype from one and a half years to four months.
At the current stage, specialists conducted comprehensive tests of the prototype of the FVP 160/20 on the test bench of the Laboratory of Hydraulic Machine Engineering. The energy characteristics of the pump were obtained and analyzed (the dependence of head, power and efficiency coefficient on flow rate), as well as cavitation characteristics, which describe resistance to local «boiling» of the liquid and the erosion caused by it. In addition, validation of the mathematical models developed and used in the design was performed. The study showed that the discrepancy between the calculation results and the experimental data is within acceptable limits — less than 2% for all measured parameters. This indicates the high adequacy of the developed mathematical model. The confirmed efficiency value of the unit at nominal mode was 62%: this is higher than that of domestic (including Soviet) analogues, whose average efficiency values are 54−57%, and also surpasses the performance of foreign pumps, which stand at 59−60%.
Based on the results of the tests of the FVP 160/20 pump, the engineers decided to adjust the geometry of the remaining pumps in the line.
In the further plans of SPbPU specialists is testing the pump under conditions as close as possible to real ones, that is, when pumping viscous media with abrasive inclusions. The Polytech specialists will make the casing of one of the designed pumps transparent in order not only to quantitatively but also visually assess the fluid flow inside the device. The results obtained will make it possible to scale the pump line to other parameters, taking into account interchangeable elements of the flow parts.