The investigation of the effect of volute tongue on hydrodynamic forces for high speed centrifugal pump

In order to study the influences of volute tongue thickness on pressure fluctuation in a centrifugal pump, the unsteady three-dimensional numerical simulation was computed by adopting closed Reynolds-averaged equations based on the RNG k-Ε model and the sliding-mesh method.The inner flow field characteristics and pressure fluctuation of the pump were obtained, and the corresponding frequency spectra analysis was conducted. The results show that under design condition, the hydrodynamic forces on impellers are related to the pressure fluctuation between the impeller and the volute tongue, their main component frequency is the impeller passing frequency through the volute tongue. The amplitude of hydrodynamic forces increases with the increase of the thickness of volute tongue.