Original Article

Proc IMechE Part A:

J Power and Energy
Influence of T-shape tip clearance on 0(0) 1–11
! IMechE 2017

performance of a mixed-flow pump Reprints and permissions:

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DOI: 10.1177/0957650917733129
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Tan Lei1, Xie Zhifeng2, Liu Yabin1, Hao Yue1 and Xu Yun1

Abstract
Influence of original and T-shape blade end on performance of a mixed-flow pump is investigated by using experimental
measurement and numerical simulation. The new proposed T-shape blade end is formed at 95%–100% blade height with a
linear increase of blade thickness. In comparison with original blade end, the efficiency of pump with T-shape blade end
increases by 1.86%, and the leakage flow decreases by 15.95%. Space streamlines across the blade tip clearance can be
divided into three beams with different movement trajectories, and the swirl motions of streamlines directly correspond
to the swirling strength. The highest amplitude of pressure fluctuation appears at the blade leading edge along the tip
clearance. In comparison with original blade end, the highest amplitude of pressure fluctuation for T-shape blade end
decreases by 27.45%. The dominant frequencies of the pressure fluctuations in tip clearance region for original blade end
and T-shape blade end are both five times of the axis rotation frequency, corresponding to the impeller blade number of
five.

Keywords
Mixed-flow pump, T-shape, tip clearance, leakage and streamline

Date received: 13 June 2017; accepted: 28 August 2017

Introduction such as the impeller trimming,11 flow passage shape,12

Mixed-flow pump is a general machinery which con-
verts mechanical energy into energy of fluid, and it is
widely used in major cycle of thermal power plant,
field irrigation, water transportation project, and so
on. The key component of mixed-flow pump for
energy conversion is the impeller, so plenty of efforts
have been conducted to improve its performance.
Those effects can be categorized into four main stra-
tegies as follows: design methodology of impeller1–5;
optimization of impeller6–10; geometry of impel-
ler11–14; and prewhirl regulation at impeller
inlet.15–17 Zangeneh1 and Bonaiuti et al.18 proposed
a design method for the radial and mixed-flow impel-
ler, and this design method had also been applied in
pumped storage hydro units to design a high-
efficiency runner.19 For optimization of impeller, the
combination of intelligent algorithm and computa-
tional fluid dynamics (CFD) have been fully devel-
oped. Kim and Kim5 presented an optimization
strategy for pump based on a radial basis neural net-
work model. Due to the complex three-dimensional
flow pattern in pump, the geometry of pump impeller
should be also three-dimensionally twisted to guaran-
tee the excellent performance. Many geometrical par-
ameters of impeller affect the performance of pump,
blade wrap angle,13 blade trailing edge14 and blade
outlet angle.19 Besides the impeller itself, another
effective way to improve the impeller performance is
the regulation of velocity circulation at impeller inlet.
Tan et al.15 proposed a three-dimensional design
method of inlet guide vanes for centrifugal pumps,
and the influence of inlet guide vanes on cavitation16
and energy20 performances, rotor–stator interaction21
and clocking effect22 are also investigated.
In order to prevent physical contact between a
rotor blade and a shroud wall, some finite clearance
between them is required. The tip clearance flow ori-
ginates from the pressure difference between the blade
pressure and suction sides and the relative motion
between the blade tip and the shroud wall. When
the tip clearance flow passes through the blade tip
1
State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering, Tsinghua
University, Beijing, China
2
School of Aerospace Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Corresponding author:
Tan Lei, Department of Thermal Engineering, State Key Laboratory of
Hydroscience and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084,
China.
Email: tanlei@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn
2 Proc IMechE Part A: J Power and Energy 0(0)
Table 1. Parameters of the mixed-flow pump.
Parameters Value
Rated discharge Qd (m3/s) 0.54
Rated head H (m) 17
Rotational speed n (r/min) 1450
Specific speed ns 464
Number of impeller blades Zi 5
Number of guide vanes Zg 6
clearance, it attains a direction transverse to the main
flow in the blade-to-blade passage, and then the inter-
action between the two makes the flow pattern extre-
mely complicated. Geometry effects on tip clearance
flow have been investigated focusing on two main
aspects: tip clearance shape23,24 and tip clearance
size.25–28 The similar conclusions are that a very
slightly convergent gap configuration will provide
better flow performance and a larger clearance size
will reduce the energy performance.
Complex flow patterns in tip clearance region have
been studied extensively mainly by experimental
measurement and numerical simulation. Huixuan
et al.29,30, Miorini et al.31 and Huixuan et al.32 took
a series of experiments by particle image velocimetry
measurements on the flow structures in the tip region
of a water-jet pump rotor, including the tip clearance
flow and the rollup process of a tip leakage vortex.
Tan et al.33,34 used the high-speed camera to investi-
gate the role of large-scale cavitating vortical struc-
tures in performance breakdown of an axial waterjet
pump. Zhang et al.35–37 conducted numerical simula-
tion with the Shear Stress Transport (SST) k–! tur-
bulence to study the tip leakage vortex trajectories,
cavitation patterns in an axial flow pump.
Since the tip clearance in turbine pumps is inevit-
able, specific influences of tip clearance on pump per-
formance should be studied sufficiently. To improve
the flow pattern in tip clearance region, a new T-shape
blade end is proposed and its influence on the pump
head, efficiency, leak flow rate and pressure fluctu-
ation is investigated and compared with the original
one. The notations are list as an appendix at the end
of the present paper.
Physical model and measurement
equipment
Parameters of mixed-flow pump
The tested pump is a mixed-flow pump with five
blades and six guide vanes, and they are designed by
the direct and inverse iteration design method pro-
posed by Tan et al.3 and Bing and Cao4. The main
pump parameters are listed in Table 1.
The manufacture of impeller is precisely controlled
by computer with the three-dimensional geometrical
data given by the inverse iteration design method,
while the guide vanes are precisely casted using the
material of cast steel. Figure 1 shows the tested impel-
ler and guide vanes.
Measurement equipment
Figure 2 shows a standard hydraulic test apparatus,
where the pump performance is tested.
The test apparatus is a close-loop water circulation
including the tested pump and a set of digital
equipment. The flow rate is measured by an electro-
magnetic flowmeter (LDG-500S, Guanghua
Instrument Co., Ltd, Shanghai, China), the head is
tested by two pressure transmitters (V15712-
HD1A1D7D, Newsruipu Instrument Co., Ltd,
Zhengzhou, China), and the rotational speed and
torque are measured by the torque speed sensor
(JCZL2-500, Powerlink, Instrument Co., Ltd,
Changsha, China). On analysis of the system uncer-
tainty, the comprehensive error of pump performance
measurement is estimated to be within 0.28%.
Numerical method and setting
Computational domain and numerical method
Figure 3 shows the original blade end and new pro-
posed T-shape blade end. The new proposed T-shape
blade end is formed at 95%–100% blade height. At
95% height, the blade thickness equals the original
blade thickness, while at 100% height, the blade thick-
ness is 1.5 times of the original blade thickness. From
95% to 100% blade height, the blade thickness lin-
early increases.
Figure 4(a) shows the main computational domain
including the impeller and guide vanes, and there still
are inlet domain and outlet domain with a length of
quintuple pipe diameter. The mesh interface between
stable and rotational domains is set as frozen rotor
and transient rotor stator methods for steady and
transient calculations, respectively. Structural hexahe-
dral meshes are generated for the whole pump com-
putational domain, and the local meshes near the
blade and vane surfaces are refined to improve the
calculation quality, as shown in Figure 4(b).
Figure 5(a) shows five monitoring points named
TIPM1–TIPM5, which are set on the blade end from
the blade leading edge to trailing edge in order to inves-
tigate the pressure fluctuation in the tip clearance
region. The tip clearance size between the blade end
and shroud wall is 1 mm. The radiuses of impeller at
inlet and outlet are 139 mm and 210 mm, so the relative
value of the tip clearance are 7.20% and 4.8% blade
spans, respectively. As shown in Figure 5(b), there are
16 nodes distributed in this tip clearance of 1 mm,
which is considered to be fine to capture the flow field.
The numerical simulation is conducted by the CFD
code CFX 14.5. The steady and transient flow field are
solved by the Navier–Stokes equations with
Lei et al.
Figure 1. Tested impeller (a) and guide vanes (b).
Figure 2. Schematic diagram of test apparatus: 1, inlet water tank; 2, regulating valve; 3, pressure gauge; 4, motor and torque
detector; 5, mixed-flow pump; 6, pressure gauge; 7, flowmeter; 8, outlet water tank; 9, data acquisition card; 10, computer.
Figure 3. Original blade end (a) and T-shape blade end (b).
re-normalization group (RNG) k–" turbulence model.
According to the experimental measurement, the
boundary conditions are set as the total pressure at
pump inlet, the mass flow rate at pump outlet and no
slip wall at walls. Scalable wall function is used to
solve the flow near the pump wall.
3
Independence test of mesh density and time step
To test the effect of mesh number on calculation
result, four meshes are generated as shown in
Table 2. The calculation results of pump head and
efficiency have small difference for four meshes, so
when the mesh number exceeds 6984281 the calcula-
tion results are reliable. Finally, the total mesh
number of 6984281 is chosen in the present work.
To test the effect of time step
t on calculation
result, three time steps, including
t ¼ 1.29  104,
2.58  104 and 5.17  104 s, are used. Figure 6
shows the histories of pressure on point TIPM4 for
three time steps. The results have small difference for
three time steps. Finally, the time step

t ¼ 2.5862  104 s is chosen in the present work.
Validation of calculation results
Figure 7 shows the comparison of experimental
results and calculated data for pump head and
4 Proc IMechE Part A: J Power and Energy 0(0)

Figure 4. Computational domain and meshes of mixed-flow pump. (a) Computational domain and (b) local meshes near blade.

(a) (b)

Tip clearance

TIPM5
TIPM4 PS
TIPM3 SS
TIPM2
TIPM1

Figure 5. Monitoring points (a) and meshes near tip clearance (b).

Table 2. Pump head H and efficiency  for different mesh

elements.

Item Mesh 1 Mesh 2 Mesh 3 Mesh 4

Suction pipe 990080 990080 990080 990080

Impeller 668700 2050620 3339105 5098880
Guide vane 509976 1523808 1882632 3083952
Diffuser pipe 772464 772464 772464 772464
Total elements 2941220 5336972 6984281 9945376
H/H1 1 1.001944 0.985093 0.985742
/1 1 0.998833 1.001049 0.997084
Here, H1 and 1 are the results of pump head and efficiency for mesh 1,
respectively.

Figure 6. Time histories of pressure on TIPM4 for three time

efficiency with no tip clearance. The calculated results
agree well with the experimental data in a wide flow
rates, and the maximum relative error appears at par-
tial load condition with a value below 5%.
Results and discussion
Hydraulic performance and flow pattern
Figure 8 shows the head, efficiency and leak flow rate
of the mixed-flow pump with 1 mm tip clearance for
steps.
original blade end and T-shape blade end at different
flow rates. Though the pump is set with 1 mm tip
clearance, the highest efficiency of pump still appears
at the designed flow rate for both original blade end
and T-shape blade end. But the highest efficiencies for
1 mm tip clearance of original blade end and T-shape
blade end decrease to 80.80% and 82.66% in com-
parison of the experimental result of 86.12%, which
Lei et al.
demonstrates that the tip clearance has great influence
on the pump efficiency. It is satisfied that the new T-
shape blade end improves the pump efficiency by
1.86% in comparison of the original geometry with
the same size of 1 mm tip clearance. For the pumps
with the original blade end and T-shape blade end, the
trend of head in flow rate range of 0.8Qd to 1.2Qd is
similar with that of efficiency. The head and efficiency
of pump with T-shape blade end in the whole flow
rate range are higher than those of pump with original
blade end. Meanwhile, in the flow rate range of 0.8Qd
to 1.2Qd, the leak flow rate over the blade end from
blade pressure surface to suction surface is about
Figure 7. Comparison of experimental and calculated results.
Figure 8. Influence of blade end shape on pump performance.
5
3.00 l/s, which is a relatively low value in comparison
of the operating flow rate, but it still has the same
trend with the head and efficiency for the original
blade end and T-shape blade end. At design flow
rate, the leak flow rates are 3.01 l/s and 2.53 l/s for
original and T-shape blade ends, respectively, with a
decreasing by 15.95% for T-shape blade end.
Figure 9 shows the velocity vector at tip clearance
region of original and T-shape blade ends at different
flow rates. For three flow rates, the magnitude of vel-
ocity vectors for original blade end is larger than that
of T-shape blade end, which corresponds to the trend
of leak flow rate between the two blade ends. The
lower velocity magnitude certainly induces weaker
leak flow rate and then results in higher efficiency
and head of the mixed-flow pump.
Figure 10 shows the three-dimensional streamlines,
surface streamlines at y ¼ 0 plane and velocity swirl
strength at y ¼ 0 plane for original and T-shape blade
ends. As shown in Figure 10(a) and (c), the three-
dimensional streamlines evenly start from the blade
tip along the blade leading to trailing edges, and
those streamlines can be divided into three beams
named S1, S2 and S3. The streamlines S1 is originated
from the region near the blade leading edge and then
forward over the contiguous blade. The number of
streamlines S1 for original blade end is smaller than
that of T-shape, but the swirl intensity of streamlines
at their starting position for original blade end is
stronger than that of T-shape. So when the stream-
lines S1 arrive at the y ¼ 0 plane, the streamlines S1 of
T-shape blade end are quite smooth, while that of
original blade end are still slight swirling. The surface
6 Proc IMechE Part A: J Power and Energy 0(0)

Figure 9. Velocity vector at tip clearance region at different flow rates: (a) original at 0.8Qd, (b) T-shape at 0.8Qd, (c) original at 1.0Qd,
(d) T-shape at 1.0Qd, (e) original at 1.2Qd and (f) T-shape at 1.2Qd.

Figure 10. Streamlines and velocity swirl strength of (a, b) original and (c, d) T-shape blade ends.
Lei et al. 7

Figure 11. Pressure fluctuation spectrum in tip clearance region. (a) Original blade end and (b) T-shape blade end.

streamlines at y ¼ 0 plane around the streamlines S1

Table 3. Frequency and amplitude of pressure fluctuations in
are all forward without obvious vortex.
tip clearance region.
For the streamlines S2, they are originated from
Dominant Amplitude of pressure the middle position of blade chord and then duck
frequency (Hz) fluctuation (Pa) through the contiguous blade. The number of stream-
Monitoring lines S2 for original blade end is larger than that of
point Original T-shape Original T-shape
T-shape, and the swirl intensity of streamlines at their
TIPM1 120 120 703 510 starting position for original blade end is stronger
TIPM2 120 120 70 46 than that of T-shape. The streamlines S2 of original
TIPM3 120 120 89 63 blade end are twined into a compact bunch, when
TIPM4 120 120 150 89 they reach the y ¼ 0 plane, a serious vortex is
formed as shown in Figure 10(a). While for the
TIPM5 120 120 269 172
streamlines S2 of T-shape blade end, their swirl
8 Proc IMechE Part A: J Power and Energy 0(0)
Figure 12. Pressure distribution near blade end. (a) Original at 1.0Qd (b) T-shape at 1.0Qd.
Figure 13. Streamline at meridional plane. (a) Original at 1.0Qd and (b) T-shape at 1.0Qd.
intensity is weak and no obvious vortex is induced at
the y ¼ 0 plane. To characterize the swirl intensity of
three-dimensional streamline, the swirling strength
which presents the imaginary part of complex eigen-
values of velocity gradient tensor is introduced. The
characteristic equation of eigenvalues of the gradient
tensor is given by
l3 þPl2 þQlþR ¼ 0
where P ¼ tr(D) is an invariant of the velocity gra-
dient tensor, D is the velocity gradient tensor. The
other two invariants of D are Q ¼ 12 P2  trðDDÞ
and R ¼ 13 P3 þ 3PQ  trðDDDÞ . If the discrimin-
ant for this characteristic equation is greater than
zero, then the tensor has one real eigenvalue and a
pair of conjugated complex eigenvalues lcr  lci .
Here, the lci is called swirling strength, and represents
the strength of the local swirling motion. In
Figure 10(b) and (d), the counters of swirling strength
for streamlines S2 are quite different for original and
T-shape blade ends, which illustrates that the swirl
motion of streamlines directly correspond to the swir-
ling strength.
For the streamlines S3, they are relatively complex,
and main of them come from the region near blade
trailing edge, but others of them are also originated
from leading or middle of blade chord. Almost all of
those streamlines for original and T-shape blade ends
pass through tip clearance of the contiguous blade
and then disturb the flow pattern at y ¼ 0 plane as
shown in Figure 10(b) and (d). The regions of high
value of swirl strength at y ¼ 0 plane for original and
T-shape blade ends are nearly the same, which dem-
onstrates that though the number of streamlines S3 is
ð1Þ less than S1 and S2, the streamlines S3 still have
powerful influence on the flow field in impeller.
Pressure fluctuation characteristics
Figure 11 shows the pressure fluctuation spectrum at
monitoring points TIPM1–TIPM5 from blade leading
edge to trailing edge. It can be seen that the largest
pressure fluctuation amplitudes appear at the TIPM1
for both original and T-shape blade ends. The dom-
inant frequencies of the pressure fluctuations on
monitoring points TIPM1–TIPM5 for both original
and T-shape blade ends are 120 Hz, five times of the
axis rotation frequency fARF ¼ n/60 ¼ 24 Hz, corres-
ponding to the impeller blade number of five. The
secondary frequencies of the pressure fluctuations on
these monitoring points for both original and T-shape
blade ends are 145 Hz, which is six times of the axis
rotation frequency corresponding to the diffuser blade
Lei et al.
number of six. The amplitudes of pressure fluctu-
ations at the secondary frequency increase from
blade leading edge to trailing edge due to decreasing
distance from diffuser under rotor–stator interaction.
It demonstrates that the pressure fluctuation fre-
quency in impeller is mainly influenced by rotor–
stator interaction of rotational impeller and stable
diffuser.
Table 3 shows frequency and amplitude of pressure
fluctuations in tip clearance region for original and
T-shape blade ends. The variation trend of pressure
fluctuations is similar for the two cases. Generally, the
maximum values of pressure fluctuation amplitude
appear at blade head for original and T-shape blade
ends and sharply decrease to the minimum value at
the second point, then they gradually increase till to
the blade trailing edge. In comparison of two cases,
the amplitudes of pressure fluctuations for T-shape
blade end are nearly 0.7 times of those for original
blade end.TIPM1
Figure 12 shows the pressure distribution near
blade end. For original and T-shape blade ends, the
pressure gradients near blade head are high with
strong pressure variation, so the pressure fluctuations
in this region are also stronger than that in other
regions as shown in Table 3. In contrast, the surface
area at T-shape blade end is larger than that of ori-
ginal blade end as shown in Figure 12. When the
pump works at the same operating condition, the
pressure difference between blade pressure and suc-
tion surfaces is the same, so the larger surface area
results in smaller pressure gradient. Therefore, the
pressure fluctuation amplitudes for T-shape blade
end are weaker than that of original blade end as
shown in Table 3.
Figure 13 shows the streamlines at meridional plane.
It can be seen that there is significant leakage vortex
around the blade tip clearance. In comparison with the
original, the leakage vortex core of T-shape down-
stream the blade shrinks and moves toward the
shroud, so the effect of leakage flow on mainflow pat-
tern will be reduced, which corresponds to the higher
efficiency and lower pressure fluctuation. The flow field
around the blade end also demonstrates that the
T-shape blade end can improve the pump performance.
Conclusions
A combination approach of experimental measure-
ment and numerical simulation is employed to inves-
tigate the effect of original and T-shape blade ends on
energy performance, leakage flow pattern and pres-
sure fluctuation of a mixed-flow pump. The new pro-
posed T-shape blade end is formed at 95%–100%
blade height with a linear increase of blade thickness.
The following conclusions can be drawn:
1. In comparison with the original blade end, the
proposed T-shape blade end can improve the
9
pump efficiency by 1.86% and reduce the leakage
flow by 15.95%.
2. In comparison with the original blade end, the
flow pattern around the tip clearance for T-
shape blade end obviously improves. The velocity
vector across the tip clearance decreases and the
leakage vortex core shrinks for T-shape blade end.
Space streamlines across the blade tip clearance
can be divided into three beams with different
movement trajectories, which are defined as S1,
S2 and S3 with distinct characteristics.
3. In comparison with original blade end, the highest
amplitude of pressure fluctuation for T-shape
blade end decreases by 27.45%.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial
support for the research, authorship, and/or publication
of this article: This work has been supported by the
Tsinghua University Initiative Scientific Research Program
(Grant number 2014z21041), the Beijing Natural Science
Foundation (Grant number 3164045) and the National
Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant number
51579006, 51679122).
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Appendix
Notation
D velocity gradient tensor (s1)
fARF axis rotation frequency (Hz)
H head (m)
n rotational speed of impeller (r/min)
ns specific speed
p pressure (Pa)
P invariant of the velocity gradient tensor
(s1)
Q flow rate (m3/s)
Q invariant of the velocity gradient tensor
(s2)
R invariant of the velocity gradient tensor
(s3)
Lei et al. 11

Tb time between two sequential blades  efficiency of pump

passing through a fixed position (s) l eigenvalue of the gradient tensor (s1)
Zg number of guide vanes lci swirling strength (s1)
Zi number of impeller blades lcr real part of the conjugated complex
eigenvalue (s1)

t time step (s)