Leakage Flow Influence on SHF pump model performances

This paper deals with the influence of leakage flow existing in SHF pump model on the analysis of internal flow behaviour inside the vane diffuser of the pump model performance using both experiments and calculations. PIV measurements have been performed at different hub to shroud planes inside one diffuser channel passage for a given speed of rotation and various flow rates. For each operating condition, the PIV measurements have been trigged with different angular impeller positions. The performances and the static pressure rise of the diffuser were also measured using a three-hole probe. The numerical simulations were carried out with Star CCM+ 9.06 code (RANS frozen and unsteady calculations). Some results were already presented at the XXth IAHR Symposium for three flowrates for RANS frozen and URANS calculations. In the present paper, comparisons between URANS calculations with and without leakages and experimental results are presented and discussed for these flow rates. The performances of the diffuser obtained by numerical calculations are compared to those obtained by the three-holes probe measurements. The comparisons show the influence of fluid leakages on global performances and a real improvement concerning the efficiency of the diffuser, the pump and the velocity distributions. These results show that leakage is an important parameter that has to be taken into account in order to make improved comparisons between numerical approaches and experiments in such a specific model set up.