Effect of impeller blade height on hydraulic performance of vortex pump

To thoroughly investigate the fluid flow mechanism within vortex pumps and understand the impact of impeller blade height variations on pump performance, flow rate-head characteristic curves of a closed impeller,opened channel vortex pump were experimentally measured at different impeller blade heights. Numerical simulations of the vortex pump were conducted using the k-ε turbulence model and unstructured mesh. Internal flow field analysis was performed using ANSYS CFX post-processing to study the influence of impeller blade height changes on the external characteristics of the vortex pump. Results show that the simulation outcomes closely align with experimental data trends, demonstrating high reliability of the numerical simulation method. Under identical flow rate conditions, as the impeller blade height decreases, the longitudinal vortex intensity within the pump gradually weakens, and the number of vortex cores in the impeller channel reduces, leading to a progressive decline in pump head and efficiency.These findings provide a reference basis for subsequent optimization design of vortex pumps.