Author(s)

A. Ladouani & A. Nemdili

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to study the effect of solid-mixture on the cavitation characteristic of a centrifugal pump. However, pump tests under varied volumetric concentrations of sandy clay are reported. The experimental results show that: - at low flow rates, NPSH curves are independent of the silt concentration, - at high flow rates, NPSH curves of silt mixtures appear to be higher than those of water, - the both required and available NPSH curves show that cavitation flow rates decrease with increasing concentration, indicating that cavitation accelerates with the concentration. Finally, based on the silt studied, it can be concluded that the cavitation NPSH curve at high flow rates is not sensitive to gravitational forces, but only to the viscous flows. Keywords: centrifugal pump, solid-mixture, cavitation, NPSH curve, silt concentration. 1 Introduction In Algeria, silting of reservoirs has become a major drawback for all existing dams, because it causes very high losses in capacity. Such losses are estimated at 20 million cubic meters per year for some dams (Errih [1]). Hydraulic dredging

Keywords

centrifugal pump, solid-mixture, cavitation, NPSH curve, silt concentration.