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The objective of present work is to use numerical simulation to investigate the complex three-dimensional and secondary flow structures developed at the inlet and impeller in a centrifugal pump at design and off-design points. The pump impeller is shrouded with 6 backward swept blades and with a specific speed of 0.8574. The characteristic of the pump is measured experimentally with straight and curved intake sections. Numerical computation is carried out to investigate the pump inlet flow structures and subsequently the flow field within the centrifugal pump. The numerical results showed that strong interaction between the impeller eye and intake section. Secondary flow structure occurs upstream at the pump inlet has great influence on the pump performance and flow structure within the impeller.

An unsteady numerical analysis has been carried out to study the strong impeller volute interaction of a centrifugal pump with six backward swept blades shrouded impeller. The numerical analysis is done by solving the threedimensional Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes codes with standard k-ε two-equations turbulence model and wall regions are modeled with a scalable log-law wall function. The flow within the impeller passage is very smooth and following the curvature of the blade in stream-wise direction. However, the analysis shows that there is a recirculation zone near the leading edge even at design point. When the flow is discharged into volute casing circumferentially from the impeller outlet, the high velocity flow is severely distorted and formed a spiraling vortex flow within the volute casing. A spatial and temporal wake flow core development is captured dynamically and shows how the wake core diffuses. Near volute tongue region, the impeller/volute tongue strong interaction is observed based on the periodically fluctuating pressure at outlet. The results of existing analysis also proved that the pressure fluctuation periodically is due to the position of impeller blade relative to tongue.

An experiment setup was introduced to study dynamic behaviour of different types of check valves and the effects of air entrainment on the check valve performance under pressure transient condition. The experiment results show that the check valves with low inertia, assisted by springs or small traveling distance/angle gave better performance under pressure transient condition than check valves without these features. Air entrainment was found to affect both wave speed and reverse velocity. With the increase of the initial air void fraction in pipeline, the experiment results show that the wave speed was reduced, the reverse velocity was increased. The first peak pressure increased initially and then decreased with the increase of the initial air void fraction, the pressure surge periods were increased proportionally with air void fraction due to the greatly reduced wave speed. The study can be applied to help choosing suitable check valves for a particular pumping system.