A Review of Fluid-Induced Excitations in Centrifugal Pumps

This paper describes the related research work in the field of fluid-induced vibration of centrifugal pumps conducted by many researchers. In recent years, all walks of life have put forward higher demands for the vibration performance of pumps which drives the investigation on the root cause of pump vibration and the development of guidelines for the design of low-vibration pumps. Fluid-induced excitation is the most important and significant source of pump vibration. Understanding its generation mechanism and dominant characteristics is important for developing low-vibration pump design methodology. This paper starts with the analysis of unsteady flow in the centrifugal pump and summarizes unsteady flow characteristics such as jet-wake structure, secondary flow, and rotational stall in the operating pump. Based on the understanding of the unsteady flow structure in the pump, the fluid-induced excitation mechanism and its characteristics based on the investigation of unsteady pressure pulsation and excitation forces in the pump are summarized. For the pump operating at nominal flow rate, the excitation at blade passing frequency (BPF) dominates and related suppression methods are classified and summarized to provide reference for the design of a low-vibration pump.