Numerical investigation of inlet section structure effect on wear characteristic of particle condition in centrifugal slurry pump by CFD-DEM coupling

To improve the wear resistance of the centrifugal slurry pump, the inlet structure is optimized, and an equal-diameter inlet section structure is designed. Considering the particle-particle and particle-wall interactions, a two-phase flow simulation model based on CFD-DEM (computational fluid dynamics-discrete element method) coupling is established under the sparse particle condition. The Archard wear model and Relative wear model are used for quantitative and qualitative wear analysis. The flow field and particle trajectory analysis are carried out under an equal-diameter inlet section structure and a different-diameter inlet section structure. The wear characteristics of the flow-passing parts are carried out. The results show that the simulation model has good accuracy. The error between the numerical simulation results and the experimental results is less than 5%. Under the equal-diameter inlet section structure, the overall wear of the slurry pump is reduced by 15%, the wear of the volute chamber is reduced by 17.5%, and the wear of the inlet section is reduced by 93.8%. The equal-diameter inlet section structure can reduce the turbulent intensity and make the flow field stable. And the equal-diameter inlet section structure helps to reduce the wear degree and wear area of the pump.