Tag: Graduation

Graduation Of Alex De Rooij: Pumps Actually Fly Like An Unusual Airplane

Alex de Rooij receiving flowers from Suman Sapkota for his graduation
Alex de Rooij receiving flowers from Suman Sapkota for his graduation

When you hire a carpenter, he repairs everything with a hammer. So, what happens when you ask an aeronautical student to solve some issues in a dredge pump? He models the pump as a badly behaving airplane. And with success, Alex de Rooij joined our company as a graduation student and recently graduated on the topic of ‘Numerical Study on NACA Profiles Sensitivity in Dredge Pump Impellers’.

The normal procedure for designing pumps is relatively straight forward. Set the performance specifications and try to hit that mark with the simulated behaviour from an iteratively improved design. This is well documented and I’ve been writing about this process before.1

Pump design workflow (inspired by Suman Sapkota)
Pump design workflow (inspired by Suman Sapkota)

One of the design parameters is the NPSHr. This is basically the amount of absolute pre-pressure the pump requires to operate.2 The system and operating conditions will result in a certain available pre-pressure: NPSHa. When the NPSHa drops below the NPSHr, the pump will experience cavitation at the low pressure side of the blade. The flow of the medium will be disturbed and the performance of the pump will abruptly crash. There is some warning. Operating near the NPSHr, there will be an incipient cavitation where the vapour bubbles start to form, but do not cause any issue. The imploding vapour bubbles may be detected audibly for the trained listener.3 Next will be a stage on the NPSHr, where the bubbles get larger and they loudly implode. At this stage, the pump sounds like it is tumbling nuts and bolts inside. These imploding bubbles will definitely cause damage to the impeller. At last, working below the NPSHr, the bubbles will become so large, they will block the passage between the blades. The result is an immediate drop in delivered head.

Explanation of NSPHr, NPSHa and cavitation
Explanation of NSPHr, NPSHa and cavitation

The flow of the medium through the impeller can be simulated in a CFD program. Specifically for impellers, you will need to model a rotating frame of reference. And that is the usual representation of the results. However, with mathematics being one of the most powerful tools invented by humanity, we can have an alternative view on these results. We can cut the impeller along a radial and stretch open the meridional passage and the blades to a row of foils. And that is exactly where our young aspiring engineer comes in. In literature, the blades in the impeller are modelled having a constant thickness. But, Alex has been investigating what the influence will be when we model the blades as foils. Selecting a proper profile makes the blade less sensitive to stalling.

Conversion of axial view to blade to blade view
Conversion of axial view to blade to blade view

Alex, thank you very much for your work here at Damen. We’ve learned the influence of certain profiles on the performance and geometry of the pumps. You have the right mindset to pass your time at the TU Delft and graduate successfully over there also. And whenever you have some days of the month left after you spend your allowance, know that we can give you a warm reception at our office.

Alex working at the reception desk at Damen Dredging Equipment
Alex working at the reception desk at Damen Dredging Equipment

References

  1. Our Interview About New Pump Designs In The Latest Damen Nieuws, Discover Dredging
  2. When does your pump suck? Discover Dredging
  3. Cavitation in a Water Pump and Valve, Mountain States Engineering and Controls

See also

Graduation Of Wim Kleermaker: Measuring And Predicting Wear In Impellers

Wim Kleermaker during the practical phase of his graduation in dredging
Wim Kleermaker during the practical phase of his graduation in dredging

Yesterday, Wim Kleermaker graduated at the TU Delft on a research project he conducted on our slurry test circuit at Damen Dredging Equipment. Specifically, he was investigating the wear behaviour in our dredge pumps. The noteworthy aspect of this project, was that Wim was supervised by our colleague Suman Sapkota. As long time readers in the audience might remember Suman was my own pupil some years ago1.

Example of a worn impeller at the Damen Dredging Experience
Example of a worn impeller at the Damen Dredging Experience

Wear is a very common process in the dredging industry and one of the main cost factors in a project2. It is beneficial to know the amount of wear to expect in a certain condition and be able to predict the budget to reserve for this nuisance. This is only possible when we as a manufacturer will be able to predict the wear rate and pattern can provide the information to the operator for his estimates. We do have historical data that will allow us to provide a ball park figure, but a more analytical approach might assist us in particular unusual cases. Furthermore, it will also provide us insight in the impact of certain design decisions for the wear performance of a certain pump design. For Wim’s graduation, he had to approach this academically: come up with a simulation model and verify this with measurements.

Damen dredge pump slurry test circuit on the outfitting quay in Nijkerk
Damen dredge pump slurry test circuit on the outfitting quay in Nijkerk

The measurements were done in our slurry pump test circuit. This circuit has been highlighted a couple of posts back3. For Wim’s experiments, he used an impeller under a certain operating condition and mixture properties. Before and after a representative period, the condition of the impeller was measured and the difference is a measure of the wear experienced.

CFD result for the wear experiments
CFD result for the wear experiments

Wear (or scientifically: erosion) is related to the impact of the particles on the material surface. In order to know the kinetic energy of the particles, the flow field has to be known. As the flow fleild cannot be measured directly at the test circuit, we have to resort to Computation Fluid Dynamics. We already know of Suman’s graduation, to look for patterns in the flow lines, but Wim has extended the procedure to also quantitively estimate the related erosion.

Comparing CFD results (l) with measured erosion (r)
Comparing CFD results (l) with measured erosion (r)

Although there is only a limited amount of data available, comparing the results of the CFD estimation and the measured erosion are looking promising. This is certainly a workflow that will provide us the unique tools for engineering better pumps and assisting customers in their specific projects.
Although Wim will not join our ranks in the dredging community and pursue a different career in another interesting industry, we are sure he will be constructive and dedicated colleague at Marin.

Another master and student fighting evil forces (Credit: Star Wars)
Another master and student fighting evil forces (Credit: Star Wars)

References

  1. Graduation Suman Sapkota: Where wear parts were worn down, Discover Dredging
  2. Wear parts, Discover Dredging
  3. Student Interviews On Their Projects With Our Dredge Pump Slurry Test Circuit In Damen Nieuws, Discover Dredging

See also

Graduation of Arend van Roon: Detecting Flow Regime And Optimising Transport Efficiency

Arend van Roon defending his graduation thesis
Arend van Roon defending his graduation thesis

Our first happy event this year is the graduation of Arend van Roon. He recently graduated on a project in the slurry test circuit at our Research and Development department at Damen Dredging Equipment1. His research was an interesting investigation in the detection of flow regimes. It gives some insight in the processes involved in the transport of water-solids mixtures. Let me share some details from the background with you, as I think this might be helpful for your own operation also.

Overview of the Damen Dredging Equipment slurry pumping test circuit
Overview of the Damen Dredging Equipment slurry pumping test circuit

At first sight, it is hard to imagine, how something heavier than water, the grains, can be lifted when the fluid is moving. Sape Miedema has written the standard on mixture transport in his book ‘Slurry Transport’, explaining his approach with the ‘Delft Head Loss & Limit Deposit Velocity Framework2’. Without going into the academic details, I will try to help you grasp the gist of the phenomena.

DHLLDV book (Credit: Sape Miedema)
Slurry Transport text book cover (Credit: Sape Miedema)

First the grains have to be picked up. When they are lying on the bottom of the pipe, they are fully immersed, surrounded by the fluid on all sides. The free fluid on top and the pore water between the grains under and on the side of the grains. Now comes Bernoulli’s trick. When the fluid in the pipe starts moving, he says that the local dynamic pressure decreases, while the static fluid in the pores remains at the same pressure. The pressure difference between the pressure in the pores and in the moving fluid, pushes the grains out of the bed into the fluid.

Grain pickup and suspension process explained
Grain pickup and suspension process explained

Once the particles are in the fluid are in the fluid, they should stay suspended, or they fall back into the bed. The driving force here is the turbulence in the fluid. Usually dredging slurry mixtures are turbulent. This turbulence causes the fluid to flow in eddies. These are little vortices that generally move in the direction of the flow, but in a moving frame of reference tumble in all directions. Mmh, as they rotate in all directions, why don’t they cancel each other out? Now, imagine being a particle yourself, surfing on those eddies. When it is in a fluid, it tends to sink with a certain settling velocity. Independent of the local movement of the fluid. This means, that on the downward side of the eddy, the particle has a higher total velocity than on the upward side. As the eddy is sort of symmetric, the particle dwells longer in the upward draft than on the downward fall. In this infinitesimal time difference, the eddy transfers some extra kinetic energy from the fluid to the potential energy of the particle. As this loss of kinetic energy is compensated by an increase in pressure (remember Bernoulli) carrying grains in a fluid increases the pressure loss in the slurry transport.

Flow regimes and excess hydraulic gradient requirements in dredging slurry transport (Credit: Sape Miedema)
Flow regimes and excess hydraulic gradient requirements in dredging slurry transport (Credit: Sape Miedema)

This turbulence is in short the background of suspension in the slurry transport process. Depending on al the various governing parameters: densities, viscosity, diameters, velocities etc, the equilibrium of forces result in several different regimes in the slurry flow. Ranging from homogeneous, through stratified to ultimately a static bed. Each with their own particular pressure losses. And that is what we are interested in. On our dredges, we want to transport as much material to the least amount of energy3. We are constantly looking for improvements in our equipment and sensors to assist the operator in visualising and controlling the actual state of his process4. Thanks to Arend’s project and the promising results, we can set the next step in our product development.

Explanation on slurry flow conditions, critical speed and specific power consumption
Explanation on slurry flow conditions, critical speed and specific power consumption

References

  1. Innovation, Damen
  2. Slurry Transport: Fundamentals, A Historical Overview & The Delft Head Loss & Limit Deposit Velocity Framework 2nd Edition, TU Delft
  3. Innovations In The New MAD Series To Increase Uptime And Reduce Fuel Consumption, Discover Dredging
  4. Dredging Instrumentation, Damen

See also