Investigation on performance in water jet pump under turning conditions

Turning has a significant effect on the performance of water-jet pump. Here, the axial flow water-jet pump was used as the research object, the performance and inner flow characteristics of water-jet pump under different turning angle were simulated through numerical simulation. The thrust, vorticity, bubbles in impeller, vapor volume fraction and surface load of blade were analyzed in detail when the turning angles were +/- 10 degrees, +/- 20 degrees, and +/- 30 degrees, respectively. The results demonstrate that the thrust of the water-jet pump decreases linearly with the increase of the turning angle. At the same angle, the thrust of the water-jet pump when turning right is larger than that when turning left, and the maximum thrust difference is 9.14% of that without the turning angle. As the turning angle increases, the overall pressure of the water-jet pump decreases and the streamline distribution gets turbulent gradually. The vortex direction is the same as the turning direction basically. And the vortex distribution range is smaller when turning right under the same turning angle. The cavitation bubbles in the impeller occur firstly at the rim of the blade inlet and develop to the middle of the blade as the turning angle increases. The cavitation area is concentrated on the blade at turning side and the cavitation area when turning right is smaller than that when turning left.