Insight into blade tip vibration and deformation characteristics of boiler circulation pumps induced by tip leakage vortex under different tip clearances.

For circulating pumps in large power plant boilers, tip leakage flow is the main cause of blade fatigue. To investigate the correlation between tip leakage vortex and blade fatigue, in this paper, the bidirectional fluid structure coupling method is used to simulate the full flow field of the boiler circulating pump under different tip clearance sizes. The accuracy of the delayed detached vortex simulation method is verified by combining the external characteristics and vibration characteristics of the pump. It is obtained that tip leakage vortex is the main cause of blade tip vibration and deformation. Under deep stall conditions, the increase in tip clearance size suppresses the vibration displacement of the blade leading edge, while the opposite is true under optimal conditions. After decomposing tip leakage vortex, it is found that the compression–expansion term played a major role in the deformation of the blade tip, while the viscous dissipation term and the stretching term mainly affected the vibration frequency. At optimal working conditions, the main frequency of blade vibration is basically consistent with the main frequency of vortex generation. In deep stall condition, as the tip clearance size increases, the amplitude of the vibration main frequency decreases and the number of harmonic frequencies decreases, while the optimal condition is the opposite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]