Due to the high sediment content in the Yellow River, the pump units in the pumping stations along the line are often eroded by sediment, causing the reduction of pump efficiency and structural damage. The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of particle diameter on the particle track, erosion distribution and erosion rate in a double-suction centrifugal pump in a pumping station of the Yellow River with a Lagrangian particle-tracking approach and a Tabakoff erosion model. The results show that the surface erosion of the impeller on both sides in the double-suction centrifugal pump has an asymmetric distribution, and the erosion rate on both sides is different. The particle diameter affects the moving trajectory of particles and has a significant effect on the erosion morphology and position in the impeller. With the increase of particle diameter, the velocity of the particles moving towards the pressure side of the blade inlet increases, resulting in punctate impact erosion. When the particle diameter decreases, sliding abrasion gradually forms on the pressure side of the blade outlet. The change rule of the solid particle volume fraction on the impeller wall is consistent with that of erosion distribution on the impeller wall. The larger the solid volume fraction is, the higher the wall erosion rate is.

The pressure pulsation test in an axial flow pump with and without the floor-attached vortex was performed. Pressure sensors were mounted on the impeller inlet section and impeller outlet section and guide vane section outlet of the axial flow pump. The investigations showed that the pressure pulsation in the axial flow pump was mainly affected by the impeller rotation. The time-domain characteristic curves of the pressure pulsation at the impeller inlet and outlet changed the most at different periods when the floor-attached vortex appeared in the pump sump. There was no significant difference between the time-domain characteristic curves of the pressure pulsation with and without the floor-attached vortex at the guide vane outlet. The pressure pulsation induced by the floor-attached vortex was a low-frequency pulsation of 2.12 Hz, which fluctuates periodically with time in the form of a trigonometric function. The pressure pulsation amplitudes with the floor-attached vortex were larger than those without the floor-attached vortex. The floor-attached vortex mainly affected the pressure pulsation in the impeller and had less influence on the pressure pulsation at the guide vane outlet due to the rectifying effect of the guide vane.