Ocean Engineering 229 (2021) 108955

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Ocean Engineering
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/oceaneng

Rotating stall characteristics in the vaned diffuser of a centrifugal pump

Jianjun Feng a, b, *, Zhenguo Ge a, Honghong Yang a, Guojun Zhu a, b, Chenhao Li a, Xingqi Luo a, b
a
Department of Power Engineering, Institute of Water Resources and Hydroelectric Engineering, Xi’an University of Technology, Xi’an, 710048, PR China
b
State Key Laboratory of Eco-hydraulics in Northwest Arid Region, Xi’an University of Technology, Xi’an, 710048, PR China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Rotating stall in centrifugal pumps takes place frequently under part-load conditions, along with high pressure
Centrifugal pump pulsation. The major focus for studies is rotating stall inside the impeller, rarely paying attention to that in the
Vaned diffuser vaned diffuser. In this study, rotating stall behavior in a vaned diffuser centrifugal pump has been numerically
Rotating stall
investigated, and the cross-power spectrum method is adopted to identify low-frequency pressure signals. The
Cross-power spectrum
Pressure pulsation
applied numerical method has been validated by experimental results including flow structures provided by PIV
measurements. For the vaned diffuser pump, a hump region in head curve is observed between 0.25Qd and 0.5Qd
conditions. Under 0.41Qd condition, rotating stall occurs in the vaned diffuser of the pump, with three stall cells
rotating opposite to the direction of impeller rotation and the rotating frequency being 0.083 Hz equal to 1/600
of the impeller rotating frequency. Rotating stall takes place under 0.5Qd condition as well, whereas only a
periodic process of stall cell from inception to disappearance appears in the diffuser channel under 0.35Qd
condition. Furthermore, the effect of number of diffuser vanes on rotating stall characteristics has been analyzed
in detail.

1. Introduction
Electric submersible pumps (ESPs) are widely used in the offshore
petroleum industry because of their advantages in pumping high-
flowrate crude oil (Minette et al., 2016; Takacs, 2017). They are
installed in the production well, generally in deep or ultra-deep water,
greatly improving their installation and maintenance costs (Reges et al.,
2021; Castillo et al., 2019; Ribeiro et al., 2005). The research on the
reliability of ESPs to reduce risk has attracted much attention, especially
centrifugal pumps, core components of ESPs.
With the development of offshore oil production equipment in large-
scale and high-power orientation, centrifugal pumps have been exten­
sively used on non-optimal conditions (Li et al., 2020a; Zhang et al.,
2020a). Rotating stall usually occurs with pressure pulsation under low
flow rate conditions caused by single or coupled effects of backflow,
flow separation, rotor-stator interaction and jet-wake, resulting in per­
formance deterioration and the instability of the pump units (Pei et al.,
2014; Fu et al., 2015; Zhou et al., 2018).
For the research on the rotating stall in centrifugal pumps, the
experimental and numerical methods are currently used. Experiments
first promoted the study of rotating stall in pumps. Yoshida et al. (1991)
concluded for a centrifugal pump that a diffuser made interference to the
propagation speed of rotating stall on low flow conditions. Moreover,
rotating stall in the diffuser weakened and then disappeared with the
decreasing of the radial gap between the blade and vane. Based on the
results obtained from pressure pulsation measurement and particle
image velocimetry (PIV), Sinha et al. (2001) demonstrated that the
rotating stall in the diffuser originated from high-speed leakage flow.
Berten et al. (2009) reported that the type, propagation speed and
number of stalls in pumps are affected by pump’s flow and speed. Zhang
(2010) detected unstable flow inside pump’s diffuser using a
two-dimensional laser doppler velocimeter (LDV) and pointed out that
the expansion angle at the inlet of the diffuser was a key factor affecting
the rotating stall. Xue et al. (2019) revealed the evolution for rotating
stall during pumping condition by PIV, which greatly affects the per­
formance of the pump-turbine. Although the rotating stall in centrifugal
pumps can be detected by experiments, its evolution in space and time
cannot be visualized well.
The continuous progress in computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
during the past two decades has accelerated the mechanism research on
the evolution of rotating stalls in centrifugal pumps (Sano et al., 2002;
Barrio et al., 2010; Zhang et al., 2014; Zhang et al., 2020b; Ren et al.,

* Corresponding author. Department of Power Engineering, Institute of Water Resources and Hydroelectric Engineering, Xi’an University of Technology, Xi’an,
710048, PR China.
E-mail address: jianjunfeng@xaut.edu.cn (J. Feng).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oceaneng.2021.108955
Received 4 January 2021; Received in revised form 13 March 2021; Accepted 28 March 2021
Available online 22 April 2021
0029-8018/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
J. Feng et al.
Fig. 1. Three-dimensional geometry of the pump with vaned diffuser.
2019). Feng et al. (2009, 2011) focused on the field of velocity and
turbulence in a radial pump, especially rotating stall inside its impeller
at off-design conditions. Anciger et al. (2010) estimated rotating stall
inception in pump-turbines during pump mode. Lucius and Brenner
(2010, 2011) investigated the velocity pulsation under rotating stall
conditions of centrifugal pumps based on a scale adaptive simulation
(SAS) model. They found that the propagation direction for rotating stall
cells was reverse of the impeller under 30% rated operating conditions
and the frequency is approximately 0.7 times the impeller rotation fre­
quency. Xia et al. (2014) revealed that the rotating stall led to the out­
ward jetting flow in the vaned diffuser, alternatively blocking the
channel with high-pressure pulsation and flow separation. Zhao et al.
(2018) examined the evolution for rotating stalls in a pump under
0.4–0.6 design flow conditions and reported that the frequency of
rotating stalls was lower than that of the impeller rotation. Zhou et al.
(2017a,b) revealed the propagation speed and frequency for rotating
stall inside the impeller decreased as the flow reduced, whereas its
number remained constant with the increasing size. Li et al. (2020b)
reported that the stall vortex changing in the flow path of certain fluids
is the main cause of the propagation of the rotating stall, and the
confused flow near the shroud induced the pre-stall with tip initial stall.
Zhang et al. (2021) demonstrated that the frequencies of rotating stall
are always the same using numerical simulation and the coherence
analysis method, independent of pump operating conditions.
In summary, the research on rotating stall in centrifugal pumps ex­
periences from simple parameter signal measurement to visualization of
flow field by non-intrusive LDV and PIV, and from simple two-
dimensional non-viscous calculations to full three-dimensional viscous
turbulence simulations. Although numerous researches on rotating stall
in centrifugal pumps have been conducted, mainly on low-frequency
pressure pulsations, the number of rotating stall cells with stalled
channels and the propagation speed, rarely on rotating stall character­
istic inside the pump vaned diffuser. Generally, vaned diffusers are
installed on the electric submersible pump. The vaned diffuser can
gather the high-speed liquid thrown out by the impeller, and evenly lead
it to the inlet of the next-stage impeller or the outlet pipe. Meanwhile,
part of the kinetic energy of the liquid can be converted into pressure
energy in the vaned diffuser. Moreover, the stall vortex is easier to form
because of the pressurization effect of the vaned diffuser and the influ­
ence of the wake from the impeller. Therefore, due to the differences of
function and structure, the rotating stall characteristics in vaned diffuser
requires further investigation.
For identification methods of the rotating stall in centrifugal pumps,
the CFD and non-intrusive methods are currently used. The PIV, LDV
and pressure pulsation measurement are first used to capture the
rotating stall based on the velocity spectrum (Sinha et al., 2001), pres­
sure spectrum (Berten et al., 2009) and vibration spectrum (Botero et al.,
2
Ocean Engineering 229 (2021) 108955
2014). These visualization experiments are mainly qualitative re­
searches, while quantitative research needs to be further deepened.
Then with the help of CFD, the numerical simulation is used to predict
the inception of the rotating stall based on the verification of experi­
mental results. Different turbulence models are applied to analyze the
velocity and pressure spectrum to obtain the frequency of the rotating
stall, such as SST k-ω, DES (detached eddy simulation), SAS, etc (Feng
et al., 2009; Lucius and Brenner, 2010; Zhou et al., 2017a).
In this study, rotating stall characteristics inside a centrifugal pump’s
vaned diffuser was investigated based on commercial software ANSYS
CFX. Experimental results including external characteristic curves and
internal velocity field provided by PIV from the reference (Krause et al.,
2005) were adopted to validate the applied numerical method. In
addition, the signal frequency domain analysis method of the
cross-power spectrum is adopted to identify rotating stalls, and the effect
of diffuser vanes number on rotating stall is also studied.
2. Numerical methodology
2.1. Geometric model
In this study, the original model of a low specific speed centrifugal
pump from the Fluid Mechanics Laboratory of Magdeburg University in
Germany was adopted (Krause et al., 2005; Lucius and Brenner, 2010),
consisting of an impeller with a vaneless diffuser. For the pump, rotating
stall behavior in the impeller has been experimentally examined. More
details about the experiment can be taken from the reference (Krause
et al., 2005). For the purpose of examining the stall characteristics in
vaned diffuser, seven vanes were designed for the diffuser in the vane­
less area of the original model (see Fig. 1) (Gülich, 2020). Table 1 shows
main parameters of the diffuser pump.
2.2. Mesh generation
Computational meshes with a high-quality hexahedral structure
were generated for the flow domains of the original and modified ge­
ometries using ANSYS ICEM. The mesh of the modified pump consists of
an inlet pipe, an impeller with a vaned diffuser, part of which are shown
in Fig. 2. To eliminate the interference of grid size, five groups of meshes
for the modified model are selected and presented in Table 2. As shown
in Fig. 3, mesh independence is performed by considering the pump’s
head on the design condition as targets. The head (H) change is less than
1% when the mesh size is greater than 2.95 million (Mesh 2), which was
applied in further numerical simulations.
J. Feng et al. Ocean Engineering 229 (2021) 108955

2.3. Numerical settings

Head Hd
The flow characteristics is calculating using ANSYS CFX. As shown in

(m)

4.3
Fig. 2, total pressure is specified at the inlet, and mass flow rate is given
at the outlet. The research medium is water. The k-ω based SST (shear

Flow rate Qd
stress transport) turbulence model with an automatic near-wall treat­
ment is adopted due to its advantage in predicting the rotating stall and

(m3/h)

47.5
flow separation in pumps (Feng et al., 2010; Tao et al., 2014; Ye et al.,

Design operating point

2019). Solid walls are defined as no-slip boundary conditions. Both
convection and spatial terms can be discretized by the second-order

Rotational speed
scheme. The timestep was set to 0.000833 s, during which the
impeller rotates 3◦ . The total time of transient simulation is 2 s, which
nd (rpm)
corresponding to the time required for impeller to rotate 20 revolutions.
600 The target of maximal residual in each step was defined as 10− 4, with
maximal iterations of 15. The ‘transient rotor-stator’ has been employed
for data transfer on the interface between rotating and non-rotating
Outlet angle

components at each time-step. The steady calculation result under the

β4 (◦ )

same condition is used as the initial value for the unsteady simulation.
15

2.4. Validation of numerical model

Inlet angle
β3 ( ◦ )

The correctness of the original model under simulation was firstly

10

verified by the experimental results from the reference (Krause et al.,

2005). Fig. 4 depicts the comparison for flow fields at Qd and 0.5Qd
Outlet diameter

conditions between simulated method and experiment, showing good

agreement. For the non-stalled channel at Qd, the streamlines are
D4 (mm)

smooth, with slight shedding at the blade surface. For the stalled channel
at 0.5Qd, “8-shaped” stall cells near the suction side of the impeller blade
400

are observed, consisting of two vortices in different sizes. The size and
shape of the vortices are similar except some differences in the position
Inlet diameter

of the vortices because of some simplifications in the model structure

and ideal simulation settings during simulation calculations, i.e. the
D3 (mm)

smooth wall assumption and without considering the clearance.

290

Fig. 5 shows performance parameters for the modified centrifugal

pump by CFD, which are also compared with those of the original model
by CFD and experiments. The simulated results of the original model are
vanes ZDV
Diffuser

consistent with the experimental values, except for the overestimation

No. of

when the flow rate is less than 0.4Qd, further validating the accuracy of
7

the original model. One of the reasons could be that the experimental
efficiency is the total efficiency consisting of the hydraulic efficiency,
Height bI

volumetric efficiency and mechanical efficiency, while the simulated

(mm)

efficiency is only the hydraulic efficiency. On the basis of the original

23

model verification, the external characteristics and flow field of modi­

Outlet angle

fied model under investigation have been calculated using the same
simulation method. The trend of the above variables predicted by nu­
β2 (◦ )

merical simulation with a vaned diffuser is similar to that of both

23

experiment and simulation with a vaneless diffuser (original model),

although nearly all of the values decreased. This phenomenon may be
Inlet angle

attributed to the design of the vaned diffuser that increases the me­
β1 (◦ )

chanical loss of the modified model. Interestingly, the hump phenome­

19

non appears in the centrifugal pump with vaned diffuser under 0.25Qd to
0.5Qd conditions, which also occurs in the pump-turbine accompanied
Outlet diameter

by unstable flow (Li et al., 2018b; Yang et al., 2018). In general, the
hump phenomenon in the head curve is an important sign of the rotating
D2 (mm)

stall in the impeller or vaned diffuser of centrifugal pumps. Therefore,

0.25Qd to 0.5Qd operating conditions are adopted as main conditions in
278
Specific parameters of the pump.

this study.
Inlet diameter

3. Results
D1 (mm)

126.5

3.1. Investigation of pressure pulsation

To obtain the relationship between the unstable flow and pressure

pulsation in the pump diffuser, 10 monitor points are positioned at the
blades
Impeller
Table 1

No. of

midspan in different diffuser channels as shown in Fig. 6. The diffuser

ZI
5

channel (abbreviated to ch) is narrow and there are many unstable flow

3
J. Feng et al. Ocean Engineering 229 (2021) 108955

Fig. 2. Component mesh view: (a) impeller and vaned diffuser; (b) middle section of impeller with diffuser vane.

at the impeller outlet and p is the average value of pressure.

Table 2
Fig. 7 describes the time-domain analysis for the pressure pulsation
Mesh information of flow components.
of six points and the instantaneous pressure distribution in the circum­
Component Mesh size (106) ferential direction at different radii under 0.5Qd condition during a
Mesh 1 Mesh 2 Mesh 3 Mesh 4 Mesh 5 rotating period. As shown in Fig. 7(a), the pressure at the monitor point
Impeller and inlet pipe 1.80 1.80 1.80 1.80 1.80 has five obvious peaks and valleys in one rotating period under the
Vaned diffuser 0.94 1.15 1.31 1.49 1.67 rotor-stator interaction. As the radial distance of the diffuser vane in­
Total number 2.74 2.95 3.11 3.29 3.47 creases, i.e. from the vaneless space (G1) to the diffuser outlet (M5), the
rotor-stator interaction slowly weakens. In addition, the pressure of
pressure side at the diffuser inlet is obviously larger compared to the
suction side (Fig. 7(b)). In short, large pressure pulsations with huge
pressure difference on both sides of vanes may result in flow separation
and recirculation near suction side at pump’s diffuser inlet which is most
prone to stall vortex.
The frequency spectra for pressure pulsation analyzed by fast Fourier
transformation (FFT) at monitor points G1–G4 under 0.41Qd condition is
shown in Fig. 8. The Hanning window is used to deal with pressure
signals, and the simulated pressures are calculated with root mean
square (RMS) values. The sampling frequency is 1200 Hz and the
number of samples is 600. Large amplitudes appear on the blade passing
frequency (BPF) with its multiple frequency. Meanwhile, low-frequency
pulsations with different amplitudes occurred, even relatively high,
which may be caused by the combined action of the steady and unsteady
vortices.
To better obtain the source of low frequency, the cross-power spec­
trum is adopted to analyze the pressure signals of different monitor
points (Charley and Carta, 2001; Li et al., 2016). Through the method,
the correlation of two detected signals and the phase difference of the
corresponding frequency components can be obtained. The larger the
amplitude of the two signals is, the higher the correlation at the fre­
Fig. 3. Mesh independence analysis on design condition. quency will be. It can eliminate the possibility of accidental correlation
and provide data support for the subsequent internal flow analysis. The
phenomena in the diffuser channel. In order to reduce the effect of the cross-correlation function (Rxy (τ)) of the two groups of signals, i.e. x(t)
vane surface on the monitor points, all monitor points are set in the and y(t), in Eq. (2) describes the correlation for two different random
middle of the flow channel, including G1–G4 in the vaneless space and processes evaluated at two different moments of interval τ.
M1–M5 with S1 in the diffuser channel. To make the pressure at monitor ∫
points dimensionless, pressure coefficient is used as expressed in Eq. (1): 1 T
Rxy (τ) = E[x(t)y(t + τ) ] = lim x(t)y(t + τ)dτ (2)
T→∞ T 0
p− p
Cp = (1) Then, the cross power can be defined as Eq. (3):
0.5ρU22
/
Sxy = FFT(x(t)) × FFT(y(t))Z N 2 (3)
where p is the pressure, ρ is the density, U2 is the circumferential velocity

4
J. Feng et al. Ocean Engineering 229 (2021) 108955

Fig. 4. Comparison of flow field between CFD simulation and PIV measurement (Krause et al., 2005): (a) Non-stalled channel at Qd, PIV; (b) Non-stalled channel at
Qd, CFD; (c) Stalled channel at 0.5Qd, PIV; (d) Stalled channel at 0.5Qd, CFD.

Fig. 6. Distribution of monitor points.

Fig. 5. Comparison of performance parameters.

be determined (Li et al., 2016). If an extremely high amplitude is

where Z is the conjugate function, N represents the number of data. observed at the same frequency, it shows that these two monitor points
Fig. 9 shows the cross-power spectrum for four monitor points (i.e. have a strong correlation at this frequency. The time-domain figure
G1, G2, M1, S1) under different low flow rate conditions. According to shows the correlation between the two signals at a certain frequency, i.
the rules given in Table 3, the presence or absence of a rotating stall can e., whether the frequency is triggered by the same disturbance source,

5
J. Feng et al.
Fig. 7. Pressure pulsation on monitor points in the channel of the diffuser: (a) Pressure pulsation at different radii of the diffuser; (b) Circumferential pressure
distribution at different radii.
Fig. 8. Frequency spectra of pressure pulsation at monitor points G1-G4
under 0.41Qd.
which is mainly shown by the periodicity of the same monitor point and
the phase difference of different monitor points. If the frequency is
triggered by the same vibration source, the phase difference between the
two points is consistent because of the fixed position of the monitor
point. For the monitor points G1, G2 and M1, S1, the angle differences in
circumference are both 51.43◦ . As long as the different monitor points
have higher amplitudes at the same frequency and the phase difference
between them is approximately 51.43◦ , the low-frequency signal can be
considered from the same disturbance source, that is, the rotating stall
occurs. At 0.41Qd condition (Fig. 9(c)), the amplitude at 0.005fn is high,
and the time domain signal presents an obvious periodicity with the
same phase difference of 51.43◦ between G1 and G2. Therefore, the
frequency comes from the rotating stall. Rotating stall takes place also at
0.5Qd (Fig. 9(d)). Despite the certain phase difference in time signal
under 0.25Qd condition (Fig. 9(a)), no strong correlation frequency ex­
ists between the monitor points. Moreover, high amplitudes with
different frequencies are observed at 0.35Qd condition (Fig. 9(b)). That
is, several kinds of stall vortices exist simultaneously in the channels of
the diffuser under 0.35Qd condition.
3.2. Analysis of internal flow structure
Obtaining the rotating frequency of stall cells does not only involve
obtaining the frequency for pressure pulsation at each point, but also
determining the number of stall cells. Fig. 10 depicts distributions for
pressure and streamline at the midsection of the diffuser channel at four
6
Ocean Engineering 229 (2021) 108955
moments under 0.41Qd condition. Ch represents channel. Obviously, the
pressure in the channel of the diffuser is unevenly distributed in the
circumferential direction, and three stall cells exist. Thus, the rotating
frequency of the stall cell is 0.083 Hz, with a period T of 12s. T0 rep­
resents the period of three stall cells as a whole, from the previous flow
path to the next flow path in the rotation direction, i.e. T0 = T/7 ≈ 1.7 s.
As shown in Fig. 10 (a), stall cells 1, 2 and 3 are respectively located at
Ch1, Ch3 and Ch6. Then stall cell 2 moves to Ch4 at t = t0 + T0/3, while
the other two do not change (Fig. 10 (b)). Similarly, stall cell 1 travels to
Ch2 (Fig. 10 (c)), and stall cell 3 shifts to Ch7 (Fig. 10 (d)). The three stall
cells show obvious asynchronous characteristics during the rotation
process, which continues for 6 T0 within a complete rotating period.
That is, the stall cell rotates in the channel of the diffuser and returns to
its original channel. In addition, the stall cell in the channel of the
diffuser rotates towards the opposite direction for the impeller.
Fig. 11 presents the pressure distribution at the diffuser outlet at t =
t0 + T0/3. The circumferential pressure gradient in the stalled channel is
milder than that in the non-stalled channel, probably because the for­
mation of stall cell weakens the unevenness of circumferential pressure
distribution. Moreover, the maximum pressure gradient appears be­
tween stall cells 1 and 2, and the pressure of stall cell 1 is far higher than
that of stall cell 2, resulting in the movement of stall cell 1 in the next
moment.
To analyze the components of the complex low frequency under
0.35Qd condition, the flow pattern in a channel of the diffuser during a
period from the onset of stall cell to its disappearance is shown in Fig. 12.
In general, the stall cell in the channel does not have a regular forward or
reverse rotation relative to the impeller, and the stall cell in a part of the
channel does not exhibit an obvious periodic behaviour, such as in Ch3.
As shown in Fig. 12 (a), a large stall cell appears near the inlet of the
channel at t = t0, which then divides into two small cells at t = t0 + T0/4
and move to the outlet with increased size at t = t0 + 2T0/4 (Fig. 12 (b)–
(c)). At t = t0 + 3T0/4, the mentioned two cells vanish in Ch3 (Fig. 12
(d)). The periodic process of stall cell in Ch3 from appearance to
disappearance is bound to cause pressure pulsation, and this phenom­
enon in each channel of the diffuser is different which may lead to the
complex low frequency.
The form of stall cell inside the diffuser is identified based on the Q-
criterion (Fig. 13), which represents the rotation and strain rate tensors
in Eq. (4) (Zhang et al., 2018b; Han and Tan, 2020). When Ωij > Sij, the
fluid is affected by the rotation force more than the strain force, i.e. Qc >
0, vortex appears.
1( )
Qc = Ω2ij − Sij2 (4)
2
where,
J. Feng et al. Ocean Engineering 229 (2021) 108955

Fig. 9. Cross-power spectrum under different conditions: (a) 0.25Qd; (b) 0.35Qd; (c) 0.41Qd; (d) 0.5Qd.

[ ]
1 ∂Ui ∂Uj
Ωij = −
Table 3 2 ∂xj ∂xi
Rules for judging flow structure. [ ] (5)
1 ∂Ui ∂Uj
Flow C2p -f Cp-N Sij = +
2 ∂xj ∂xi
structure
High Same Obviously Same phase
amplitudes frequency periodic difference Stall vortices are mainly generated at the diffuser inlet, which then
develop into streamwise, spanwise and longitudinal vortices at various
Rotating stall Yes Yes Yes Yes
Alternative Yes Yes Yes No conditions. Under 0.5Qd condition, the streamwise vortex appears near
stall the leading edge and the spanwise vortex is generated near the trailing
Unsteady Yes No No No edge of the diffuser vane (Fig. 13 (a)). Under 0.41Qd condition, the in­
vortex No – Yes/No Yes/No crease in attack angle weakens the streamwise vortex, and longitudinal

7
J. Feng et al.
Fig. 10. Internal flow pattern at different moments under 0.41Qd.
Fig. 11. Circumferential pressure distribution at diffuser outlet under 0.41Qd.
vortex is observed at the diffuser inlet with strong spanwise vortex near
the trailing edge (Fig. 13 (b)). With the flow further decreasing to
0.35Qd, longitudinal vortex accounts for the main part of the diffuser,
probably because the fluid directly impacts the diffuser vane pressure
side with flowing longitudinally towards the suction side (Fig. 13 (c)).
However, no horseshoe-shaped vortex is observed in the diffuser
Fig. 12. Internal flow pattern at different moments under 0.35Qd.
8
Ocean Engineering 229 (2021) 108955
channel, which is reported inside the impeller of a centrifugal pump (Qi
et al., 2012) and in the guide vane of a pump-turbine (Li et al., 2018a).
3.3. Effect of number of diffuser vanes
To investigate the effect of number of diffuser vanes on stall char­
acteristics, Fig. 14 compares distributions of stall cell inside the diffuser
with different vanes. The numbers of stall cells are 3 for three cases
(seven, eight and nine vanes). For the diffuser with seven vanes, stall
cells travel from Ch1, Ch3 and Ch6 to Ch2, Ch4 and Ch7 during T0
(Fig. 14 (a) and (d)). For the diffuser with eight vanes, stall cells travel
from Ch1, Ch3 and Ch7 to Ch2, Ch4 and Ch7 during T0 (Fig. 14 (b) and
(e)). Meanwhile, stall cells remain in Ch3, Ch6 and Ch9 after T0 for nine
vanes, which may be called the alternative stall (Fig. 14 (c) and (f)).
Therefore, the type of stall cells inside the diffuser is affected by the
numbers of diffuser vanes and stall cells. If the number of diffuser vanes
is a multiple of the number of stall cells, alternative stall will occur;
otherwise, the change in the number of diffuser vanes only affects the
rotating frequency of stall cell, rather than the type of it.
Fig. 15 shows the frequency spectra of pressure pulsation at the
vaneless space and the inlet and outlet of the diffuser under 0.41Qd
condition for the cases of different numbers of diffuser vanes. Compared
with the amplitude at the BPF of seven diffuser vanes at vaneless space,
the nine is 20% higher, whereas the eight is 50% lower (Fig. 15 (a)).
Meanwhile, the amplitude of the pump with seven diffuser vanes is the
largest at the inlet of the diffuser vane, i.e., 38.5% higher than that of
eight diffuser vanes (Fig. 15 (b)). As shown in Fig. 15 (c), the amplitudes
at the BPF are nearly the same at the outlet of the diffuser. In addition,
J. Feng et al.
Fig. 13. Iso-surface of Qc=10000 s-2 under different conditions: (a) 0.5Qd; (b) 0.41Qd; (c) 0.35Qd.
Fig. 14. Internal flow pattern of different number for diffuser vanes under 0.41Qd condition.
low-frequency pulsations with different amplitudes can be observed for
the pump with nine diffuser vanes, even relatively high, which may be
mainly caused by alternative stall (Fig. 14 (c) and (f)). Generally, the
amplitudes for eight diffuser vanes at three positions are lower than
those of the other two, although the rotating stall cell appears. There­
fore, the appropriate number of diffuser vanes may help to eliminate the
adverse effects of the rotating stall. Furthermore, in order to eliminate or
delay the stall in centrifugal pumps, some other methods have been
examined, including adopting slotted blade (Ni et al., 2019), splitter
blades (Zhang et al., 2018a), and gap drainage blade (Zhang et al.,
2019), and improving inflow conditions by grooving inlet pipe (Feng
et al., 2018). It can help to eliminate the rotating stall and optimize the
design of centrifugal pumps.
4. Conclusions
In this study, the rotating stall characteristics in the vaned diffuser of
a centrifugal pump under part-load conditions have been numerically
9
Ocean Engineering 229 (2021) 108955
investigated in detail. Numerical results of the original model are vali­
dated by experiments. The rotating stall inside pump’s diffuser channel
with flow pattern evolution are captured by analyzing the pressure
pulsation and internal flow structure. In addition, the effect of number of
diffuser vanes on stall characteristics is also examined. Some major
conclusions are drawn as follows:
1) The flow field and performance curves of the original pump agree
well with experimental ones. The numerical methodology is there­
fore verified. Meanwhile, the hump phenomenon in the head curve is
observed at part-load conditions from 0.25Qd to 0.5Qd for the
modified pump equipped with a vaned diffuser. The phenomenon
may be caused by the stall vortex in the vaned diffuser.
2) The large pressure pulsation with pressure difference on both sides of
vanes may cause stall vortex on the suction side at the diffuser inlet,
where the main frequency is blade passing frequency with a low-
frequency pulsation. The cross-power spectrum method is adopted
on pressure signals to identify rotating stall phenomenon in the
J. Feng et al.
Fig. 15. Frequency spectra of pressure pulsation for different number of diffuser vanes: (a) Vaneless space; (b) Diffuser inlet; (c) Diffuser outlet.
vaned diffuser of the pump. According to the analysis on the corre­
lation and phase difference characteristics obtained between
different pressure signals, rotating stall has been identified under
both 0.5Qd and 0.41Qd conditions, but not for 0.35Qd or 0.25Qd
condition.
3) Under 0.41Qd condition, rotating stall phenomenon has been
observed in the vaned diffuser of the pump, with three stall cells
rotating opposite to the direction of impeller rotation and the
rotating frequency being 0.083 Hz equal to fn/600. The stall cells
reduce the uneven distribution for circumferential pressure at the
diffuser outlet. Under 0.35Qd condition, a periodic process of stall
cell can be observed from inception to disappearance in some
channels of the diffuser. In addition, vortices are mainly observed in
the streamwise and spanwise directions under rotating stall condi­
tions such as 0.41Qd and 0.5Qd, while longitudinal vortices dominate
under 0.35Qd condition.
4) The type of stall in the diffuser channel is affected by both the
number of diffuser vanes and the number of stall cells. If the number
of diffuser vanes is a multiple of the number of stall cells, alternative
stall will occur; otherwise, the change in the number of diffuser vanes
only affects the rotating frequency of stall cell, rather than the type of
it. Furthermore, a reasonable number of diffuser vanes can greatly
10
Ocean Engineering 229 (2021) 108955
reduce the amplitudes of pressure pulsation at the vaneless space and
the diffuser inlet.
Credit authorship contribution statement
Jianjun Feng: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing-Review &
Editing, Funding acquisition. Zhenguo Ge: Investigation, Writing-
Review & Editing. Honghong Yang: Writing-Original Draft, Method­
ology, Software. Guojun Zhu: Validation, Formal analysis. Chenhao Li:
Resources, Data Curation. Xingqi Luo: Validation, Supervision.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foun­
dation of China (Grant Nos. 52079108 and 51909212).
J. Feng et al. Ocean Engineering 229 (2021) 108955

Nomenclature

Ap amplitude of pressure pulsation [kPa]

Cp pressure coefficient
D diameter [mm]
f frequency [Hz]
fn pump rotating frequency [Hz]
H head [m]
n rotating speed [rpm]
p pressure [kPa]
Q flow rate [m3/h]
Qc Q-criterion [s-2]
r radius [mm]
Rxy(τ) cross-correlation function
Sij strain rate tensor [m2/s4]
Sxy cross power
t time [s]
T rotation period of stall cells [s]
T0 rotation period of one stall cell [s]
t0 initial time [s]
Greek letters
β angle of blade [◦ ]
ρ density [kg/m3]
η efficiency [%]
θ circumferential angle [◦ ]
Ωij rotation tensor [m2/s4]
Subscripts
d design point
DV diffuser vane
I impeller
1 inlet of impeller
2 outlet of impeller
3 inlet of diffuser
4 outlet of diffuser

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