Hydraulic axial plunger pump: gaseous and vaporous cavitation characteristics and optimization method

Xiaoyu Suo, Yi Jiang, Wenjie Wang*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

20 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Gaseous and vaporous cavitation have extremely harmful effects on hydraulic axial plunger pumps, reducing flowrate and increasing flow pulsation. The collapse of vapor bubbles strongly impacts the inner wall and produces many pits. Therefore, it is very important to reduce gaseous and vaporous cavitation to improve the performance of hydraulic axial plunger pumps. In this work, a full cavitation model and a compressible model are used to simulate the two kinds of cavitation, which are validated by a series of experiments. It is found that the vapor and gaseous bubbles in the plunger chamber collapse owing to pressurization caused by the water hammer effect. The results show that a better combination of plunger chamber radius and swash plate angle can reduce the two kinds of cavitation when the theoretical flowrate is unchanged; increasing the angle of the inlet of valve plate can effectively reduce its cavitation and increase the filling mass of plunger chambers; increasing the angle of the relief groove can significantly reduce its vapor and gaseous volume fraction. The results can provide a useful reference for reducing gaseous and vaporous cavitation in the optimization and design of hydraulic axial plunger pumps.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)712-726
Number of pages15
JournalEngineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics
Volume15
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Keywords

  • Hydraulic axial plunger pump
  • gaseous cavitation
  • optimization method
  • vaporous cavitation
  • water hammer effect

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