Analysis of Air/Cavitation Interaction Inside a Rotary Vane Pump for Application on Heavy Duty Engine

This paper deals with a CFD three-dimensional multiphase simulation of rotary vane pump.

The paper presents a suitable methodology for the investigation of the cavitation effects and/or incondensable gases. All the 3D simulations were performed by using Fluent v12 (Beta version). A moving mesh methodology was defined to reproduce the change-in-time shape of the internal pump volumes. In particular, the pump analysis was focused on the generation, and evolution of the cavitation phenomena inside the machine to identify the locations where this phenomena could occur. Moreover, the influence of incondensable gas dissolved inside the operator fluid on both pump performance and cavitation evolution was evaluated. Significant results were obtained about the analysis of incondensable gas influence on the cavitation evolution showing that, today, CFD analysis can provide detailed information on such harmful phenomena which can not be achieved by experiments.

The approach adopted is generic in nature, and the obtained results can be easily used to optimize other pump designs.