Cavitating flow investigation inside centrifugal impellers for a condensate pump

In order to investigate the effect of blade inlet angle on centrifugal pump cavitation performance, numerical simulation of cavitating turbulent flow is conducted for a condensate pump with different impellers based on SST k-omega turbulence model and a mixture cavitation model. The results indicate that for a condensate pump having meridional section with larger area at blade leading edge compared with conventional pumps, the reverse flows inside the blade-to-blade channels are not negligible. It is noted that large incidence at blade leading edge is helpful to improve the cavitation performance for the pump. The possible reason may be the growth of cavities inside the impeller has less influence on the flow in the channel between two neighboring blades. Further, uniform incidence angle along the blade leading edge is preferable for the improvement of cavitation performance.