Applied Acoustics 209 (2023) 109372

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Applied Acoustics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apacoust

On the effect of an ANC system towards the transient pressure

fluctuations caused by smart-grid controlled centrifugal pumps
Johannes Büker a, Andre Laß a,⇑, Swantje Romig b, Paul Werner b, Frank-Hendrik Wurm b
a
Hydronauten GmbH, Georg-Büchner-Str. 6, 18055 Rostock, Germany
b
Institute of Turbomachinery, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, and Ocean Technology, University of Rostock, 18059 Rostock, Germany

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Smart-grid control aims to use current power converter technology of pump drives for grid stabilization.
Received 15 June 2022 Hereby, fluctuations of the power grid frequency are transmitted to the pump drive resulting in pump
Received in revised form 27 March 2023 speed changes. Along with the inherent impeller design these pump speed changes are resulting in pres-
Accepted 2 April 2023
sure pulsations which propagate as hydro acoustic pressure waves throughout the pump system causing
Available online 17 May 2023
noise and vibration issues in the piping system. Therefor, in order to realize smart-grid control, a solution
must be found to attenuate or counteract these hydro acoustic pressure waves. In an earlier work [1], an
Keywords:
active noise control (ANC) system to reduce pressure pulsations at a pump’s blade passing frequency
Active noise control
Pump system
(BPF) was published with the focus on constant points of operation. However, utilizing smart-grid control
Smart-grid control will results in high gradients of the pump speed and constantly changing points of operation are to be
Order tracking expected. This paper aims to attack those kinds of operating conditions. Within this paper, moving fre-
Blade passing frequency quencies of interest at different pump speed gradient with and without active attenuation are analyzed
Pressure pulsation and extracted from time series data by means of Vold-Kalman order tracking filter. In relation to possible
fluctuations in the power grids frequency, the active attenuation performance of the ANC system is
evaluated.
Ó 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction
Electrical consumers, such as pumps, contribute towards the
stable operation of the electrical power grid due to active and reac-
tive power consumption. As for example, the share of renewable
energy sources like wind power in the energy-mix is increasing,
so is the imbalance caused by their fluctuating power output [2]
and with it the need for grid-supporting measures. If the con-
sumers are indirectly connected to the grid via power electronic
converters, their positive contribution is reduced or non-existent.
Consequently, the ability to compensate imbalances within the
power grid is greatly reduced. A number of studies have already
been taken to find consumer electronic devices and control
schemes suitable for grid stabilization, also known as dynamic
demand control (DDC). For example refrigerators [3], heat pumps
[4], electronic vehicle batteries [5] or photo voltaic plants [6] have
been proposed. A research project founded by the European Union
is focusing on investigations to utilize the power converter tech-
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: johannes.bueker@hydronauten.de (J. Büker), andre.lass@
hydronauten.de (A. Laß), swantje.romig@uni-rostock.de (S. Romig), paul.werner3@
uni-rostock.de (P. Werner), hendrik.wurm@uni-rostock.de (F.-H. Wurm).
nology of pump drives for grid stabilization as pumps are respon-
sible for up to 30% of the industrial power consumption in
European Union. However, to stabilize the fluctuating power grid,
frequency adjustments of the pumps driving speed are required,
resulting in the emission of hydro acoustic pressure waves into
the piping system.
A pump system is the combination of pump, drive and piping
system. In a centrifugal pump, fluid is accelerated from the inlet
of a rotating impeller to the encompassing volute by a finite num-
ber of blades, where it is collected and led into the discharge line.
Due to the impeller wake flow and its interaction with the volute
tongue, periodic pulsations and random fluctuations of the dis-
charge pressure are generated. Pressure pulsations at the so called
blade passing frequency (BPF) f b;i and its harmonics are based on
blade count z and rotational speed n of the impeller.
n
f b;i ¼  z  i i ¼ 1...N ð1Þ
60
In most applications the pressure pulsations with f b;i are most
prominent in the power spectrum of the discharge pressure. Further
detail can be found for example in [7–9]. These pressure changes
are propagating throughout the piping system in terms of acoustic
pressure waves and excite the piping system hydraulically and

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apacoust.2023.109372
0003-682X/Ó 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
J. Büker, A. Laß, S. Romig et al.
Nomenclature
n rotational speed in rpm
Dn0 base rotational speed in rpm
Dni adjacent rotational speed change in rpm
Dnt top rotational speed in rpm
nq specific speed
Df 0 grid frequency deviation in Hz
Dn0 rotational speed change in rpm
knf gain factor of local grid frequency deviation towards the
change of rotational pump speed in pu/Hz
z blade count of pump impeller
x amplitude of tracked order via VKF (first generation),
complex envelope of racked order (second generation)
e error in structural equation of VKF
xc current frequency of tracked order via VKF
Dt sampling time
structurally and lead to undesirable vibrations and noise emissions.
In worst case, they cause acoustic and/or structural resonances and
may damage the pump system. By changing the rotational speed as
grid stabilizing measure, those resonances are almost certain to be
excited.
In an earlier work [1], an ANC system based on the principal of
destructive interference was presented, capable of effectively
attenuating dominant hydraulic pressure pulsations at blade pass-
ing frequency (BPF) and its harmonics for most points of operation
of a pump system. Additionally the attenuating effect of the acti-
vated ANC system on structural vibrations and airborne noise were
shown. However, only static points of operation have been
addressed. Based on this work, the ability to attenuate propagating
pressure waves at moving points of operation and to compensate
for fluctuations in drive speed due to smart-grid control is investi-
gated in this paper.
To assess the possibility of attenuating pressure pulsations
while the point of operation changes based on the power grids fre-
quency, the magnitude and gradient of pump speed changes have
to be quantified. Rump et al.[10] presented a model for the control
of a pump drive in a heating system, where the active power con-
sumption of the pump drive is altered based on measured changes
in the local grid frequency. In his model, the rotational speed n is
changed linearly proportional to the grid frequency deviation Df 0:
Dn0 ¼ knf  Df 0;
The gain factor knf was discussed in a range of ½0:01; 0:08 pu per
1 Hz of grid frequency fluctuation, where pu (”per unit”) describes
a normalized reference unit. In this case, 1pu refers to an operational
point of a defined rotational speed. If, for example, 1pu refers to the
rated speed of 1450 rpm of our research pump, 0:01 pu=Hz describes
the change of 14:5 rpm per 1 Hz frequency deviation. In [10], a range
of 2:5 Hz in grid frequency deviation was considered. This refers to
a change in rotational speed of Dn0 ¼ ½0:01; 0:08 pu=Hz
1450rpm=pu  2:5 Hz ¼ ½36; 290 rpm. According to the 2007 trans-
mission code [11], static grid frequency deviations occur in a time-
scale of ½0:2; 1:5 Hz, hence a maximum expectable gradient in
rotational speed can be calculated. Taking a worst case approach,
the rotational speed is assumed to be driven in a trapezoid form if
frequency and amplitude of the grid’s frequency are known. As can
be seen in Fig. 1, the ANC system would have 1/4 period of the oscil-
lation to converge, before the next change in rotational speed occurs,
resulting in a maximum gradient of
290 rpm
¼ 3480 rpm=s:
1=1:5 Hz  0:125
Applied Acoustics 209 (2023) 109372
A matrix of structural equation of VKF
x vector of amplitude of tracked order via VKF at all con-
sidered time samples
e vector of errors in structural equation of VKF
y measured signal VKF
g error term in measurement equation of VKF
y vector of measured signals of VKF at all considered time
samples
g vector of error terms in measurement equation of VKF
H phase of the carrier wave of VKF
y measured signal VKF
c matrix of carrier waves of VKF
J cost function of VKF
r weighting factor of VKF
Df bandwidth of VKF
Nowadays the common limit for pump speed changes is about 100
rpm/s to prevent undesirable noise or vibration issues. Hence,
smart-grid control is not realized in most pump systems yet. The
desired gradient of the smart-grid control acts as a benchmark for
the presented ANC-system as it needs to catch up to and still be able
to attenuate the introduced pressure pulsations even if the rota-
tional speed is changed rapidly. One should bear in mind that a fre-
quency shift of 2; 5 Hz will cause the grid to disconnect
automatically and is usually not encountered in normal operation.
Still, it should be mentioned that changing rotational speeds of
pumps can also arise due to other reasons. One example is the
energy optimal control of pump’s rotational speeds in heating sys-
tems due to varying demands over the days and years[12].
By achieving noise control for pumps at fluctuating operation
condition, a whole class of electrical consumers would be enabled
to be integrated and controlled by smart grid networks, serving
their owners needs closer, while previously being restricted due
to noise and vibration issues.
2. Experimental methods
2.1. Measurement setup
The closed loop piping system passing the semi-anechoic cham-
ð2Þ ber of the Institute of Turbomachinery at the University of Rostock
ð3Þ
Fig. 1. Schematic for grid frequency deviation and rotational speed.
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J. Büker, A. Laß, S. Romig et al. Applied Acoustics 209 (2023) 109372

is operated with water. The integrated centrifugal pump is a proto-
type pump with a specific speed of nq =13.4 rpm at a reference
speed of nref ¼ 1450 rpm. The asynchronous servo motor is con-
trolled by a SINAMICS S210 frequency converter and consumes
17 kW of power at 1500 rpm drive speed. The complete closed loop
pump system including the prototype pump, valve registers and
marked sensor positions is shown in Fig. 2. The dynamic pressure
fluctuations are measured inside the suction line (s1 ; s2 ), the pump
(p1 ) the discharge line (d1 . . . d5 ) and on the roof of the semi-
anechoic chamber (r1 ; r2 ) by means of acceleration-compensated
dynamic pressure sensors (PCB S112A22) radially integrated into
the pipe wall. The angle of rotation and rotational speed of the
pump shaft are measured by means of an incremental disc using
inductive sensors (BES 516–3044-G-E4-C-PU-05). All signals are
recorded by a Brüel & Kjaer LAN-XI measuring system equipped
with measuring cards (3050-A-060).
All measurements were conducted by driving the pump in lin-
ear ramps between four base speeds (n0 ) and three independent
top speeds, resulting in 12 different pairs of limiting drive speeds
(cf. Table 1). All ramp measurements were taken systematically
for a set of predefined pump speed gradients starting at 100 rpm/
s up to 2950 rpm/s in steps of 150 rpm/s. Gradients higher than
2950 rpm/s, like the required 3480 rpm/s mentioned in Section 1,
could not be achieved with the available motor. The real speed gra-
dient has to be determined for each measurement individually,
since every coupled system is characterized by individual inertia
properties in the pump, motor and fluid domain. The real speed
gradient of each measurement is derived by applying a linear
regression to the ramp section of the measured speed curves
between 110% base and 90% top speed as indicated by the dashed
lines in Fig. 3.
All 12 speed step ranges along with 20 individual pump speed
gradients each were measured at a fixed valve opening ratio,
related to the pumps best efficiency point of operation (BEP) at ref-
erence speed nref , resulting in a total of 240 measurements. For
each measurement, the pump is first driven at the current base
speed n0 for 10 s without active noise control (ANC off). The speed
is then raised with one of the predefined speed gradients to the
desired top speed nt ¼ n0 þ Dni , held there for 10 s and then low-
ered with the same gradient. After another 10 s of settling time,

Table 1
Base speed and adjacent speed changes.

n0 in rpm 950 1200 1350 1450

Dn1 in rpm 125 50 25 25
Dn2 in rpm 250 125 50 50
Fig. 3. Exemplary selection of investigated pump speed curves at various speed
Dn3 in rpm 500 250 100 100
gradients.

Fig. 2. Closed loop piping system passing the semi-anechoic chamber with installed prototype pump and marked sensor locations.

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J. Büker, A. Laß, S. Romig et al. Applied Acoustics 209 (2023) 109372

the same sequence (10s settling – positive gradient – 10s settling -

negative gradient – 10s settling) is repeated with the active noise
control enabled (ANC on). The entire measurement sequence is
triggered by a LabView program which also controls the ANC sys-
tem allowing exact synchronisation and repeatable measurements
for each gradient operation. The complete measurement campaign
is controlled using a LabView program at the FPGA level.

2.2. ANC system

The ANC system consists of a hydrodynamic actuator mounted

on an angled lateral pipe tee, which is connected to the discharge
line at an angle of 30 ° relative to the discharge flow direction. The
ANC system is depicted in Fig. 4 and can be seen mounted to the
closed loop piping system in Fig. 2.
In order to minimize unwanted noise related to pump-induced
pressure pulsations, the principle of destructive interference is uti-
lized. As indicated in Fig. 4, two longitudinal and planar wave fields Fig. 5. Dispersion curves of normalized phase velocity vs. normalized wave
propagating from the pump (1) and the actuator (2) are superim- number. (kf ¼ x=cf , pipe mean radius r p ¼ 0:034m and speed of sound in local
posed in such a way that the high and low pressure regions of both fluid cf ¼ 1277m=s).
wave fields face each other. As a result, both pressure regions are
balancing and their pressure pulsation amplitudes are significantly
of the blade passing frequency. Further details can be found in
reduced downstream (3).
Büker and Laß et al. [1]
The ANC-system is only capable of deliberately attenuating
plane wave pressure pulsation, because only one pressure trans-
ducer is mounted along the circumference of the pipe at a certain 2.3. Order tracking technique
axial position. For that reason, only pressure pulsations with uni-
form value at the cross section of the pipe can be measured clearly. As the ANC system addresses only the dominant frequencies,
The attenuation performance can therefore only be analysed for hence the first three BPFs, the reduction of the pressure pulsations
plane wave pressure pulsations. To ensure that only plane wave is examined with focus on these specific frequencies. To extract
pressure pulsations were present in the frequency range of inter- those so called orders of the pressure pulsations, the Vold-
est, the cut-off frequencies of higher order modes were determined Kalman order tracking filter (VKF) is used as classical FFT methods
based on the theory presented by [13], considering the pipe wall would lead to blurred frequency resolution.
elasticity and local fluid speed of sound cf .
This involves the calculation of the phase velocities cm , at which 2.3.1. The Vold-Kalman filter
higher order modes are able to propagate. At frequencies lower The VKF uses optimization theory to best fit a signal of a known
than the cuf-off frequency of a certain mode, the calculated phase structure to measurement data. This filter can be applied offline to
velocities tend to infinity and pressure pulsations cannot propa- measurement data, where the exiting frequency must be known at
gate with this mode shape. The phase velocities were normalized all times. Here, the RPM measurement can be used to determine
by cf and are shown in Fig. 5 vs the normalized wave number based this fundamental frequency. As a tachometer is used, the instanta-
on the pipe mean radius rp . neous RPM is determined by the period between the rising edges
As can be seen in Fig. 5, the third BPF harmonic is well below using pulse with modulation. This decreases the sampling rate of
the frequency at which the second order mode becomes finite. the RPM signal. In order to compensate for this effect the current
Only the 0. mode with phase velocity of cf and the 1. mode with fundamental frequency is determined by cubic interpolation of
the under sampled pump speed signal.
phase velocity of more than 3 times cf exists, while the 0. mode
Apart from the frequency signal, the signal’s structure has to be
is expected to be dominating the pressure wave field.
known, which is assumed to be a sine wave. Considering this, the
To realize the destructive interference and achieve a high effec-
structural equation, which is a second order difference equation,
tiveness of the ANC system, the hydrodynamic actuator needs to be
can be derived according to[14]:
precisely controlled by an adaptive ANC algorithm. In this research
work the FxNLMS algorithm is utilized in three independent and xðnÞ  cðnÞxðn þ 1Þ þ xðn þ 2Þ ¼ eðnÞ; ð4Þ
parallel working channels to cancel out the first three harmonics
where cðnÞ ¼ 2cosðxc DtÞ. xðnÞ corresponds to the amplitude of the
order to be extracted, xc is the current frequency, Dt the sampling
time and eðnÞ an error term, which is zero if frequency and ampli-
tude of xðnÞ do not vary over the included samples. Eq. 4 can be
expressed in matrix form:
2 32 3 2 3
1 cð1Þ 1 . . . 0 0 0 xð1Þ eð3Þ
6 76 7 6 7
4... ... ... ... ... ... . . . 54 . . . 5 ¼ 4 . . . 5
... ... ... ... 1 cðN  2Þ 1 xðNÞ eðNÞ
Ax ¼ e
ð5Þ
Fig. 4. Sectional view of the actuator mounted to the discharge line including
schematically drawn instantaneous pressure regions: propagating from the pump
such that all samples of the measurement are included. The rela-
(1), the actuator (2) and after interference (3); dark and light grey depict regions of tionship of the measurement data with the pulsations of the consid-
higher and lower pressure relative to the mean pressure level coloured in white. ered orders is described in equation:
4
J. Büker, A. Laß, S. Romig et al. Applied Acoustics 209 (2023) 109372

yðnÞ ¼ xðnÞ þ gðnÞ;
where yðnÞ is the measured signal, xðnÞ the tracked order and gðnÞ is
an error term containing noise and other orders included in yðnÞ.
Again, a matrix formulation with all measured values is given by
[14]
ð6Þ as a global solution, which is recommended in [14]. The addition of
the identity matrix E in Eq. 13 leads to a positive definite sparse
matrix ðr2 AT A þ EÞ which is always invertible, if r is not chosen
too large. Finally, to find the time signal, the complex envelope
has to be demodulated by

y  x ¼ g: ð7Þ ½ xð1Þ xð2Þ . . . xðNÞ  ¼ realðx  CÞ½16: ð14Þ

Those two Eq. 4 and 7 build the VKF of the first generation. Later,
the second generation was derived, where instead of extracting
the time signal xðnÞ the complex envelope of the examined order
is calculated. A carrier wave is defined as:
X
n
expðjHðnÞÞ; whereHðnÞ ¼ xðiÞDt
i¼0
and HðnÞ is the phase. With the tracked order consisting of the com-
plex envelope x and the carrier wave expðjHðnÞÞ the data equation
becomes:
yðnÞ ¼ xðnÞ expðjHðnÞÞ þ gðnÞ
y  Cx ¼ g;
where C ¼ diagðexpðjHð1ÞÞ; expðjHð2Þ; . . . ; expðjHðNÞÞ. The multipli-
cation of the measurement values y by CH leads to a frequency shift
of the tracked components towards zero. Thus, this implementation
technically corresponds to a low pass filter [15]. The structural
equation also changes due to the transfer of the carrier wave to
the data equation. In Eq. 4 x is the complex envelope, a low fre-
quency modulation of the carrier wave, and in A cðnÞ becomes
2 for a two pole filter. A low frequency modulation implies
smoothness, which leads to the sufficient condition for smoothness
that the function can be locally represented by a low order polyno-
mial. The polynomial order determines the number of poles[16]. A
standard choice is two poles. The advantages of the second genera-
tion formulation are that the frequency does not occur in the struc-
tural equation, thus there are no limitations for the slew rate of the
RPM[17]. Furthermore, the choice of the bandwidth for the tracked
order is easier[16].
The structural and the data equation form an under-determined
system for xðnÞ. Hence, more conditions need to be set. The vari-
ances of the error terms gðnÞ and eðnÞ have to be minimal and their
relation has to stay constant[15]. To consider all conditions simul-
taneously, a cost function is defined and minimized by setting its
gradient to zero.
2.3.2. Filter application
The implementation of the VKF in Matlab was done according to
[18]. To choose the bandwidth of the VKF with a good accuracy but
also fast convergence during steep gradients of the changing pump
ð8Þ speed, a study with artificial signals similar to the measured pres-
sure was conducted. These signals were constructed as the pres-
sure pulsations of the first three BPFs with the corresponding
gradients of frequency as in the experiment and an added noise
term. When substracting the three orders extracted via VKF from
the generated signal, the remainder should be equal to the noise.
So the RMS of the remainder was compared to the RMS of the
ð9Þ noise. In this way, the optimal bandwidth for each gradient in rota-
tional speed could be found. For the sake of comparability, a uni-
form bandwidth of Df ¼ 20 Hz is chosen, which was suitable for
all gradients examined in this paper.
2.4. Determination of convergence time
The steep gradients in the pump speed lead to weaker reduction
of pressure pulsations trough the ANC system. But by the time the
rotational speed is constant again, the ANC system converges. To
assess the effectiveness of the ANC-system under these transient
conditions, the convergence time can be considered. It is deter-
mined using an exponential fit as depicted in Fig. 6.
The blue line denotes the sum of the first three BPFs of pressure
pulsations extracted via VKF from the measurement data after the
run up or run down of the pump speed finished. The broad red line
is the exponential fit, where the parameters a; b and c according to
a  expðb  tÞ þ c are found using a nonlinear least squares method.
The narrow red lines correspond to the tangent at time t ¼ 0 and to
a horizontal line, which represents the value the exponential fit
converges to. The time, at which those two lines cross is defined
as the convergence time s. It corresponds to the time, when the
ANC system has achieved about 63% reduction compared to the
starting point[19].

J ¼ r 2 eT e þ gT g ð10Þ

with eT e ¼ xT A Ax and gH g ¼ ðyT  xH C Þðy  CxÞ,

T H

@J
¼ 2r2 AT Ax þ 2ðx  CH yÞ ¼ 0 ð11Þ
@x
r is a weighting factor, which influences the bandwidth of the
filter. Choosing a large value for r leads to slow convergence but
high accuracy, whereas a small r results in faster convergence with
a lower frequency resolution. In [15] this relationship was further
examined for stationary cases using the transfer function of the
VKF. The choice of the bandwidth defines the weighting factor
for a two pole filter as
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
pffiffiffi
21
r¼ ; ð12Þ
6  8cosðPDf Þ þ 2cosð2PDf Þ

where Df is the filter bandwidth. After choosing an appropriate

weighting factor r, the tracked order x can be found via
1
x ¼ ðr 2 AT A þ EÞ CH y ð13Þ Fig. 6. Determination of the convergence time.

5
J. Büker, A. Laß, S. Romig et al. Applied Acoustics 209 (2023) 109372

3. Results and discussion

3.1. Quasi-stationary behavior

The efficacy of an ANC system in the operational field of the

installed pump was already shown in [1]. Here, it will be depicted
in a different way and additionally used to validate the application
of the VKF to extract the pulsations of the blade passing frequen-
cies. For quasi-stationary conditions, the rotational speed of the
1 1
pump is increased from 0 min to 1550 min in 10 min. In
Fig. 7, the Campbell diagram of the measured pressure at the loca-
tion on top of the semi-anechoic chamber (r1 ) is presented for the
case without ANC. The colored area is the measured data, which is
transformed to frequency domain using the Fast Fourier Transform
(FFT). For each considered rotational speed of the pump between
1 1
800 min and 1550 min the frequency response at the pressure
sensor can be seen. The black lines correspond to the first three
orders extracted using the VKF. From the extracted time series a Fig. 9. Envelope of the pulsations of the first three orders BPFs.
Campbell diagram was made in the same manner as for the mea-
sured values. At the frequencies and rotational speeds correspond-
1
ing to the first three orders, the amplitudes were read out, the best efficiency point of 1450 min in the range of the largest
resulting in the black lines in the Campbell diagram of the mea- pressure pulsations of 1:7 kPa the reduction achieved via ANC is
sured dynamic pressure. As the black lines are exactly on top of high. Moreover, the pulsation can be reduced to a maximum of
the colored areas, the extracted amplitudes using the VKF match 0:2 kPa over the whole considered range of rotational speeds.
the measured amplitudes, thus the VKF can be employed to cor-
rectly extract the amplitudes for pulsations of known frequencies. 3.2. Transient behavior
Fig. 8 shows the analogous Campbell diagram when ANC is turned
on. Again the black lines denote VKF-tracked pulsations. Appar- In the previous section the effect of ANC in a quasi-stationary
ently, the ANC can reduce the pressure pulsations drastically to case was demonstrated. This is followed by the analysis of tran-
the extend, that they can hardly be seen for quasi-stationary oper- sient cases, which occur when the pump speeds and thus power
ating conditions. This is emphasized in Fig. 9, where the sum of the consumption are utilized to stabilize the power grid.
envelopes of the pulsations of the first three orders of the BPF with In Fig. 10 a comparison of the stationary (known from [1]) and
and without ANC is shown. Especially for rotational speeds around some exemplary transient cases are shown. The blue graph, which
covers the entire speed range, shows the amplitude of the pressure
pulsations without the ANC system for the stationary case, the red
graph the corresponding case with ANC on. Furthermore three dif-
ferent speed gradients in RPM are shown. For changes in rotational
speed from 950 rpm to 1075 rpm the maximum achieved speed
gradients are 1775:67 rpm=s and 1798:55 rpm=s, for ramp up
and ramp down operation, respectively. For the second speed
range from 1200 rpm to 1325 rpm they are 1835:09 rpm=s and
1863:7 rpm=s and for the third speed range from 1450 rpm to
1550 rpm the gradients are 1466:55 rpm=s resp. 1504:53 rpm=s.

Fig. 7. Campbell diagram with ANC off.

Fig. 10. Envelope of the pulsations of the first three order BPFs for the static and the
Fig. 8. Campbell diagram with ANC on. transient case.

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J. Büker, A. Laß, S. Romig et al. Applied Acoustics 209 (2023) 109372

The case for ANC off is again shown in blue, whereas ANC on is
in red. Additionally, the increasing gradient in rotational speed is
the solid line and the decreasing gradient is the dotted line. Those
steep gradients between two constant rotational speeds lead to the
hysteresis kind of curves. The figure leads to three conclusions.

1. For steep gradients in rotational speed, the pressure pulsations

have similar amplitudes as in the stationary case.
2. The direction of the gradient in rotational speed influences the
amplitudes of the pressure pulsations. This can be concluded
from the hysteresis-like form of the graphs. When the ANC sys-
tem is turned off, an increasing rotational speed leads to higher
amplitudes than a decreasing rotational speed for base speeds
below nominal speed (950 rpm and 1200 rpm, solid line above
dotted line). For base speeds above nominal speed it is the
opposite (dotted line below solid line).
3. The ANC system is still able to reduce pressure pulsations dur-
1 1
ing steep gradients in RPM, as the pressure pulsations with ANC Fig. 12. Exponential fits after changing from n ¼ 1550 min to n ¼ 1450 min
on (red) are still smaller than with ANC off (blue). But it must be with the examined gradients.
stated, that the attenuation is better at the beginning of the gra-
dient of rotational speed and then decreases. In Fig. 10 it can be
seen, that for the rising gradient (solid red line) the ANC perfor-
mance is as good as in the stationary case up to almost
1500 rpm. Afterwards the remaining pressure pulsations are
higher than in the stationary case. Nevertheless, they are signif-
icantly lower than without ANC. For falling gradients (red dot-
ted line) the ANC performance is also better in the beginning
of the gradient at 1550 rpm and deteriorates for lower rota-
tional speeds. This leads to the conclusion, that in the beginning
of the gradient, the ANC system can follow the change in rota-
tional speed fast enough, but in the end of the gradient it is too
slow to follow optimally.

As described in Section 2.4, the convergence time of the ANC

system was determined for the different gradients and different
changes in rotational speed. In Fig. 11 and Fig. 12 the exponential
1
fits for a change in rotational speed from 1450 min
1
1550 min and back are depicted for all examined gradients. It
can be seen, that they look very similar, although the gradients
vary a lot. In conclusion, the convergence speed only depends to
the ANC system and not on the gradient that is used to vary the
rotational speed. Hence the required maximal gradient of
3480 rpm/s, which could not be applied in this study, should not
change the convergence time either. Consequently, the conver-
gence times for the different changes in rotational speed where
to
Fig. 13. Convergence times for different base and top speeds.
calculated as the mean for all examined gradients. They can be
seen in Fig. 13.
The quarter period of the grid frequency deviations, as depicted
in Section 1 is also inserted in Fig. 13. For a grid frequency changing
at 1:5 Hz the ANC system converges in time only for increasing gra-
dients in rotational speed and base speeds of the nominal speed.
For slower changes in frequency of 0:2 Hz after both increasing
and decreasing gradients the ANC system converges fast enough
1
for base speeds down to 1350 min . For lower base speed and
higher changes in rotational speed, the system especially struggles
with decreasing gradients. It should be mentioned, that the
assumed trapezoid form leads to discontinuities in the rotational
speed, which might be inconvenient for an ANC system. In real
applications the pump speed would have a smoother curve, prob-
ably leading to better ANC performance.

4. Conclusions

The ability to attenuate dominant pressure pulsations of a

research pump at transient points of operations by an ANC system,
introduced previously, was presented. The ANC system was evalu-
ated in a range of rotational speeds between 800 and 1550 rpm
around the pumps best efficiency point of 1450 rpm. At quasi sta-
Fig. 11. Exponential fits after changing from n ¼ 1450 min
1
to n ¼ 1550 min
1 tionary operation as reference point for good attenuation, the VKF
with the examined gradients. was tested to extract specific frequency contents from measured
7
J. Büker, A. Laß, S. Romig et al.
pressure data like the target frequency of the ANC system. As
shown in detail above, the VKF is capable of extracting wanted fre-
quency contents with its correct amplitude information in contrast
to simple FFT analysis of the raw time domain data. The same
method was then utilized to extract frequency contents attenuated
by the ANC system from measurements at transient points of
operation.
As stated above, the inertia of the pumps impeller, drive shaft
and motor in combination with the limited (but for our pump still
oversized) power of the driving unit, limits the maximum possible
gradient especially for lower step sizes.
That said, for the ability of the ANC system to attenuate at vary-
ing rotational speeds, not the pumps speed gradient itself was the
determining factor but where the gradient started and in which
direction the speed was altered. Depending on these two parame-
ters, different convergence times of the ANC system were achieved.
While the frequency of an drive speed oscillation determines both
the needed convergence time for successful attenuation and the
gradient for a given amplitude, the amplitude only affects the gra-
dient. So, frequency and phase of an oscillation plus the base speed
a pump is running at, when an oscillations starts determine the
attenuation performance most.
To reach silent operation while driving speeds are changed
rapidly, sufficient attenuation of gradients in both directions are
needed. This requirement is met 100 rpm around the rated speed
for slow fluctuations in the power grids frequency. For faster oscil-
lations, only rising gradients could be attenuated properly. In par-
tial load condition around low rotational speeds, sufficient
attenuation is only reached for positive gradients, too.
Since pumps are designed to primarily work around their best
efficiency point, dynamic demand control, including grid-
supporting measures, would be feasible for slow fluctuations most
of the time, without the introduction of noise into the pumping
system due to the working ANC system. With this ability, most
pump drives controlled by frequency converters are enabled to
be integrated into smart grid networks, not only to compensate
for fluctuations in the power grids frequency but also to be con-
trolled in a more dynamic and intelligent way that, for example,
benefits tighter efficiency standards.
With the goal to enable grid-supporting control on all possible
operation conditions, future work has to be done to elevate the
responsiveness and stability of the ANC system. While the oscilla-
tion frequency was a key factor and the required convergence
times focused on in this work were based on the power grids fre-
quency oscillation, faster oscillations required in other DDC
schemed should be studied in future works.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Johannes Büker: Supervision, Methodology, Investigation, Pro-
ject administration, Writing - review & editing. Andre Laß: Formal
analysis, Conceptualization, Data curation, Visualization, Writing -
original draft. Swantje Romig: Software, Methodology, Visualiza-
tion, Investigation, Writing - review & editing. Paul Werner: Soft-
ware, Methodology, Validation, Investigation, Writing - review &
editing. Frank-Hendrik Wurm: Resources, Funding acquisition.
Data availability
The authors do not have permission to share data.
Applied Acoustics 209 (2023) 109372
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgment
This paper was made within the framework of the research pro-
ject ‘‘Netz-Stabil” and financed by the European Social Fund
(ESF/14-BM-A55-0024/16). This paper is part of the qualification
programme ‘‘Promotion of Young Scientists in Excellent Research
Associations - Excellence Research Programme of the State of
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania”.
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