Numerical Investigation of Influence of Rotor-Rotor Gap on Performances of Contra-Rotating Axial Flow Pump

As a high specific speed pump, the contra-rotating axial flow pump with two rotors rotating reversely has been proved with higher hydraulic and cavitation performances. However, while compared with the traditional rotor-stator combination, it suffers from more significant potential interactions between two rotating blade rows, and the gap between two rotors has to be kept large with accepting the small deterioration of head performance. In our previous studies, the different speed design was confirmed effective to weaken the blade rows interactions, and therefore indicated the possibility to pertinently reduce the gap between two rotors as well as improve the hydraulic performances of the contra-rotating axial flow pump. The present paper majorly discuss the possibility to further improve the hydraulic performances of contra-rotating axial flow pump by reducing the gap between two blade rows. The cases with original gap, increased gap and reduced gap were studied by the numerical approach. The internal flow structures between two blade rows were concentrated, and a simplified method for the pressure fluctuations investigation was applied. This study is supposed to offer more understanding about the internal flow properties and give more guidelines to determine the related parameters for contra-rotating rotor-rotor combination.