Numerical simulation and uncertainty estimation in a deep-well centrifugal pump

Abstract

One stage deep-well centrifugal pump section is investigated numerically in this study. Three-dimensional steady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations are solved on high-quality fine structured grids in conjunction with the shear stress transport (SST) k-ω turbulence model by employing the CFD (computational fluid dynamics) software ANSYS-Fluent 13.0. A detailed grid sensitivity analysis was carried out to analyse the influence of grid elements number. The discretization errors were calculated specifically through the Richardson extrapolation theory. The uncertainty of fine gird for the simulation in this paper was estimated as 1.23%. The prototype experimental test results were acquired and compared with the data predicted from the numerical simulation, which showed that there is a good agreement between two methods. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.