Proceedings of the 2nd WSEAS Int.

Conference on Applied and Theoretical Mechanics, Venice, Italy, November 20-22, 2006 203

Noise sources in centrifugal pumps

BERND DÜRRER, FRANK-HENDRIK WURM
ARTEC Research and Technology Center
WILO AG
Nortkirchenstraße 100, 44263 Dortmund
GERMANY

Abstract: - The reduction of noise emission is of vital importance for pumps used in HVAC applications. Several
components contribute to the noise emission of a pump, e.g. pressure pulsations originating from the hydraulics or
electromagnetic forces in the electrical drive. In order to reduce the noise emission, it is necessary to identify the share
of each source in the overall noise level. This can be achieved by vibration measurements and spectral analysis on the
pump and appropriate models of the underlying noise-generating processes.
In this paper, the most important noise sources in centrifugal pumps and their electrical drives will be explained. The
effect of these sources will be illustrated by measurement results of structure- and fluid-borne sound power. Possible
remedies and their effect on noise reduction will be discussed.

Key-Words: - Noise, vibration, pulsation, structure-borne sound, fluid-borne sound

1 Introduction Several processes in the pump result in pressure

pulsations and consequently excite fluid-borne sound,
The noise emission of pumps used in HVAC
that propagates in connected pipes, and also excite
applications is an important quality and comfort feature.
vibration of the solid boundaries that leads to the
Especially the emission of structure- and fluid-borne
radiation of air-borne sound [1].
noise has to be considered, as these can propagate along
the pipes to sensitive locations far-away from the
installation position. The propagation and radiation of
2.1 Instationarity of flow
noise depends on factors like building structure and
materials, pipe connections and other components in the The instationarity of the flow is caused by secondary
installation (e.g. thermostatic valves and heating flows in the impeller due to rotation, the finite number of
radiators). As these factors are beyond the control of the blades and finite blade thickness, but also by effects of
pump manufacturer, it is crucial to minimize the turbulence. The finite number of blades leads to a
excitation of noise at its origin. secondary flow, caused by the asymmetric outgoing flow
In order to achieve a minimum noise level, the main of the impeller. The finite blade thickness causes a notch
noise sources and excitation processes must be known. in the wake flow. Both effects result in a time-dependent
These are, of course, related to the hydraulics and the incident flow on the resting parts (guide vanes of the
mechanical assembly, but also (especially in the case of diffuser, volute tongue of the guide casing) and
pumps with a canned motor) to the electrical drive. For consequently excite vibration of these parts.
each of these sub-systems, the potential noise sources
will be discussed. Only noise sources inherent to the 2.1.1 Pressure pulsations
design are included while noise caused by defects is Pressure pulsations are detected at discrete frequencies
disregarded. that are multiples of the rotating frequency and the
number of blades; these frequencies are also called blade
passing frequencies (BPF):
2 Hydraulic noise sources
The hydraulics of pumps consists of one or several f bpf = nb ⋅ f rot (1)
rotating impellers and resting diffusers respectively a
guide casing. The impellers convey energy according to The amplitude of these pressure pulsations depends on a
the Euler equation to the fluid. In the diffuser resp. the number of design parameters of impeller and diffuser
guide casing the flow is decelerated and the fluid is and operating parameters. One of the most important
guided to the next impeller or the pipe system beyond parameters is the distance between impeller and the
the pump. The flow inside a pump is three-dimensional, volute tongue. Smaller distances typically result in a
instationary and mostly very turbulent. much higher amplitude of the BPF. However, this
Proceedings of the 2nd WSEAS Int. Conference on Applied and Theoretical Mechanics, Venice, Italy, November 20-22, 2006 204

distance also effects the efficiency of the pump. direction or by a volute tongue that grows in axial
Therefore, in industrial practice often a compromise has direction so that the leading edge rises towards the
to be found between hydraulic and noise specification. diffuser outlet. By this tilt of the edges, the smallest gap
In addition to peaks at the BPF, there are sometimes between impeller and volute tongue will occur at
peaks to be found at lower multiples of the rotating different angular positions, with respect to the rotational
frequency. This is often the case when the number of axis. As a result, the pressure oscillation will be
blades is not a prime number, e.g. an impeller with 8 or 9 “smeared” over time, reducing the amplitude of its tonal
blades. In such a case, the impeller can be regarded as a noise.
superposition of several virtual impellers, each with a For installations with varying load, it is recommendable
number of blades that corresponds to a prime factor of to use a pump that can adapt to these conditions. For
the actual number of blades, for instance an impeller example, in heating installations with thermostatic
with 9 blades can be regarded as a superposition of 3 valves, the flow resistance changes with the positions of
virtual impellers with 3 blades each. Measurements of the valves. In case of mostly closed valves, a pump
such impellers often reveal BPFs at the 3rd and 6th without control will provide higher differential pressure
multiple of the rotating frequency in addition to the that may result in unwanted whistling noise at valves and
expected BPF at the 9th multiple. radiators. An electronically controlled pump recognizes
As the pressure pulsations are generated by the wake the lower power need of the circuit and will adapt to the
flow, their amplitude is also dependent on the operating new state of the system.
point of the pump. In general, it is infeasible to operate a
pump at partial load far away from the best efficiency 2.1.2 Turbulence
point (BEP). Especially if the pump is operated at low The impact of turbulence on noise excitation is still a
flow rates, this also means a higher manometric head, subject of basic research. Principally, the flow in pumps
i.e. higher differential pressure. As the overall (including the sound field) can be calculated by solving
differential pressure of the pump is the mean of the an equation system formed by equations for the
fluctuating pressure, this increase of the mean conservation of momentum (Navier-Stokes equations)
differential pressure typically results also in an increase and the conservation of mass [2]. The resulting system
of the amplitude of pressure pulsations, caused by an of partial differential equations has not been solved
unsteady separation of the flow. Therefore, it is analytically until today. Numerical solution is only
important during the planning of a new installation to possible for a limited number of cases (e.g. relatively
select a pump whose BEP is close to the specified simple geometries, small Reynolds numbers) due to the
operating point. In case, that several alternatives are extreme variety of different sizes of eddies that have to
available, the pump with the lower hydraulics be taken into account. Therefore, for engineering
characteristics should be selected. This is especially purposes often the time-averaged equations are solved
important for installations with a varying load profile numerically. By this method, the impact of turbulence is
(e.g. heating systems) where the maximum load is only taken into account statistically. The representation of
rarely needed. In addition, also the radial hydraulic small eddies, that may contain significant energy, is
forces acting on the impeller are minimum at the BEP. extremely simplified. The effect of this approach on the
As the radial hydraulic force is transmitted via the shaft performance of acoustic calculations is a field of
and the bearing, it will excite vibration of the pump research nowadays. However, it may be hypothesized
housing and further propagate as structure-borne sound that even small energy-rich eddies have significant
along the connecting pipes. impact at least on the generation of fluid-borne sound.
The amplitude of the pressure pulsations can be reduced Another major hydraulic source of noise is cavitation in
by a design of impeller outlet and volute tongue that is the pump. Yet, as for most applications cavitation is a
optimized with respect to acoustics, as the pressure forbidden state of operation, its effects are not further
pulsations are influenced by the interaction of the wake discussed here.
flow and the volute tongue. If the distance between
impeller outlet and volute tongue can not be increased
due to the hydraulic requirements, noise generation can 3 Noise sources in the electrical drive
be reduced by improving the geometry (for instance, the
shape of the trailing edge of the blades). Sharp edges and The electrical drive has to be included in the analysis of
bends at the volute tongue should be avoided. In noise sources of pumps: This is obvious in the case of
addition, it is often advantageous to design the volute canned motors where the electrical drive cannot be
tongue and the impeller blades in such a way that trailing separated from the pump, but also for glanded pumps,
edges of the blades and the leading edge of the volute where the cooling fan of the motor is a dominant source
tongue are tilted against each other. This can either be of air-borne noise and the motor itself an important
achieved with impeller blades that are twisted in axial source of structure-borne noise. Noise in the electrical
Proceedings of the 2nd WSEAS Int. Conference on Applied and Theoretical Mechanics, Venice, Italy, November 20-22, 2006 205

drive can be excited by mechanical forces (e.g. due to number of rotor and stator slots, the permeance in the air
imbalance), magnetostrictive forces and radial electro- gap depends on the angular position. In addition, the
magnetic forces. The noise excitation process also permeance may vary due to eccentricity or dissym-
depends on the type of electrical drive: Though typically metries of rotor and stator and magnetic saturation of the
an asynchronous motor is used, electronically lamination stack [4]. By multiplying the permeance with
commutated motors (ECM) become more and more the magnetomotive forces of rotor and stator, the
important due to their much lower energy consumption. magnetic flux density in the air gap is obtained. The
magnetic flux in the air gap causes a radial force, that is
proportional to the squared magnetic flux density. As the
3.1 Mechanical forces amplitude of this radial electromagnetic force changes
As for all rotating machinery, imbalance of rotor periodically with the rotation, vibration of the stator is
components can be a source of unwanted vibration. The excited at particular frequencies that depend on the type
effect of the imbalance is a revolving centrifugal force of electrical drive, its design parameters and the
that can be detected in the vibration spectrum at the rotational speed.
rotating frequency. This effect can be avoided by proper
balancing of rotating parts. Defects in the mechanical 3.3.1 Induction motors
assembly (e.g. bearing faults) may lead to additional For an induction motor, it can be shown, that even if the
unwanted noise and vibration, but these are not motor is free from imperfections like eccentricity, rotor
discussed here. and stator dissymmetries and saturation, a radial force
will occur at frequencies that depend on the supply
frequency f1, the number of rotor slots Zrt, the slip s and
3.2 Magnetostrictive forces the number of pole pairs p [4]:
The magnetic flux in the lamination stack causes a
relative elongation (known as magnetostriction) that is f1 ⋅ Z rt ⋅ (1 − s )
fi = ± i ⋅ 2 ⋅ f1 (2)
proportional to the squared flux density B in the p
stator [1]. As the flux density is proportional to the
supply current, the elongation changes periodically, Additional side bands will appear at multiples of twice
causing vibration of the stator at frequencies that are the supply frequency (Fig. 2). The vibration mode that is
multiples of twice the supply frequency. For a supply excited depends on the number of stator slots Zst, Zrt and
frequency of 50Hz, vibration will occur at 100Hz, p. In the presence of other adverse factors like
200Hz, 300Hz, etc. (Fig. 1). eccentricity, the amplitude of this radial force may
Reduction of noise caused by magnetostrictive forces significantly increase, resulting in noticeable noise and
can be achieved by using material with low magne- vibration.
tostriction and uniform pressing of the lamination stack. [m/s²] Cross-spectrum(Vibration #4 - axial vorne,Vibration #2 - axial hinten) - Current (Magnitude)
Nr. 17 - 2,013µF - 8001169.mea : St.max 1,0mh 2,013µF : Input : FFT Vibration
[m/s²] Autospectrum(Körperschall) - Input 800Hz
1
Working : Input : Input : FFT Körperschall - 800Hz
Zrt·frot±i·2·f1
1 300m

100m
300m

100m 30m

10m
30m

10m 3m

1m
3m

1m 300u

300u 0 200 400 600 800 1k 1.2k 1.4k 1.6k 1.8k 2k

[Hz]
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
[Hz]
Fig. 2 Vibration spectrum caused by radial force in a
Fig. 1 Vibration spectrum showing strong peaks at single-phase induction motor
multiples of 100Hz caused by magnetostriction
In the case of a single-phase asynchronous motor (that is
often used for small circulation pumps with a canned
motor), these effects can be amplified by the unbalance
3.3 Radial forces between the magnetic fields of main and auxiliary
Radial forces are caused by the main magnetic flux in winding [5]. The noise caused by radial forces in
the air gap of an electrical machine. Due to the finite induction motors can be minimised by adjusting the
Proceedings of the 2nd WSEAS Int. Conference on Applied and Theoretical Mechanics, Venice, Italy, November 20-22, 2006 206

design parameters (number of rotor and stator slots and Though the two cases of static and dynamic eccentricity
pole pairs) in such a way that only higher flexural modes provide some insight into the excitation of vibration in
of vibration are excited and that the excitation an ECM drive, it is not possible to generalize from these
frequencies do not coincide with resonant frequencies of two academic cases to typical vibration phenomena
the stator core [6]. For the mechanical assembly, it is of found in practice. Actual vibration measurements of
vital importance to achieve optimum concentricity: ECM drives often show peaks at any multiple of the
Otherwise, the effects of the non-uniform air gap will rotation frequency (Fig. 3). Obviously, such a result
lead to a significant increase of noise excitation [7]. cannot be explained by a simple superposition of the
Defects in electrical components like broken rotor bars spectra caused by static and dynamic eccentricity.
or winding faults may also lead to noise and vibration, Nevertheless, such a spectrum is the effect of a
but are not discussed here. combination of both static and dynamic eccentricity:
Depending on the angular position of the rotor, the
3.3.2 Electronically commutated motors (ECM) effects of static and dynamic eccentricity will either
ECM drives are more and more often used for pumps partially compensate or amplify each other during a
due to their considerably lower energy consumption: As revolution of the rotor. This means that the radial force
the magnetic field of the rotor is not created by inducing will become maximal when the rotor reaches a position
current in the rotor conductors, but by permanent where the air gap becomes minimal, whereas the radial
magnets in the rotor, the internal losses of the motor are force will become minimal when the center of the rotor
dramatically reduced. While the rotational speed of is closest to the center of the stator: In this case, the
induction motors is limited by the supply frequency, the deviations of the width of the air gap from its nominal
ECM drive can be designed for higher speeds. This width around the circumference reach their minimum,
means that size and weight of the pump can be reduced resulting in a minimal radial force.
while providing comparable hydraulic power. In addition to the fact that the radial force vector is
Similarly as for the induction motor, the excitation of rotating, its amplitude is oscillating between these two
vibration depends on the magnetic field in the air gap. extremes. The magnitude of this oscillation is typically
Again, the non-uniformity of the air gap is a major bigger than for the cases of static or dynamic eccentricity
source of noise excitation. For the ECM drive, alone, as the variation of the magnetic flux is bigger than
eccentricity of rotor and stator will result in noise and that caused by the discrete nature of stator slots and rotor
vibration excitation at specific frequencies related to the poles alone.
number of rotor poles p and stator slots s [8]. Two
extreme cases of eccentricity can be distinguished: static i·frot
and dynamic eccentricity.
In the case of static eccentricity, the rotor is concentric
with its own axis of rotation, but this axis does not
coincide with the center of the stator. This results in a
radial force directed to the minimum air gap that
oscillates as the rotor poles pass by during a revolution.
Consequently, apart from a constant component, a radial
force will occur at frequencies fi that are multiples of the
rotating frequency times the number of rotor poles p:

f i = i ⋅ p ⋅ f rot (3)

For dynamic eccentricity, the axis of rotation is Fig. 3 Vibration spectrum of a ECM drive running at
concentric with the stator, but not with the center of the 3800RPM: Vibration is excited by radial force at
rotor. This means that the position of the minimum air multiples of the rotation frequency.
gap is also rotating, resulting in a radial force vector that
is revolving at the rotating frequency. Additionally, this The excitation frequencies can be calculated by
force will oscillate as the minimum air gap passes by the developing the progression of radial force over
stator slots during a revolution. Consequently, apart from revolution angle into a Fourier series: As the fluctuation
the rotating frequency, a radial force will occur at of the radial force is periodic with the revolution of the
frequencies fi that are multiples of the rotating frequency rotor, the spectrum may contain any multiple of the
times the number of stator slots s: rotation frequency (Fig. 3). The amplitude of each
frequency depends on the deviations of rotor and stator
f i = i ⋅ s ⋅ f rot (4) from their center and the proportion of these deviations
to each other.
Proceedings of the 2nd WSEAS Int. Conference on Applied and Theoretical Mechanics, Venice, Italy, November 20-22, 2006 207

Furthermore, it would be an overly simplified

assumption that the effect of eccentricity can be regarded
as a two-dimensional case where the axes are only
shifted but still parallel. In reality, the axes of rotor and
stator may also be tilted against each other, meaning that
the radial force will not only depend on the angular
position but also will vary along rotational axis. This is
especially important in the case of pumps where
hydraulic forces act on the impeller, causing one-sided
additional imbalance that is also load-dependent.
The noise excitation can be avoided by achieving
optimum concentricity of rotor and stator. Again, defects
in electrical components (e.g. winding faults, uneven
magnetization of the rotor) may lead to additional noise
and vibration, but are not discussed here.

4 Conclusions
The overall noise level of a centrifugal pump is
determined by a limited number of tonal components
that can be related to underlying periodical processes in
the hydraulics and the electrical drive. It is therefore
possible, to identify the contribution of each of these
processes to the overall noise level by a spectral analysis
of pressure pulsation and vibration measurements. Based
on the known design parameters of hydraulics and
electrical drive, the origin of dominant peaks in the
spectrum can be deduced and appropriate counter
measures can be taken. Consequently, noise and
vibration measurements and according result analysis
provide important clues for the continuous reduction of
noise emission of pumps.

References:
[1] Guelich, Bolleter, Pressure pulsations in centrifugal
pumps, J. Vib. Ac., Vol. 114, 1992, pp. 272-279.
[2] Gülich, Kreiselpumpen, Springer Verlag, Berlin,
2004.
[3] Heckl, Müller, Taschenbuch der technischen Akustik,
Springer Verlag, Berlin, 1994.
[4] Yang, Low-noise electrical motors, Clarendon Press,
Oxford, 1981.
[5] Yang, Acoustic noise from small 2-pole single-phase
induction machines, IEE Proc.-Electr. Power Appl.,
Vol. 122, No. 12, 1975, pp. 1391-1396.
[6] Finley, Noise in induction motors – Causes and
treatments, IEEE Trans. Ind. App., Vol. 27, No. 6,
1991, pp. 1204-1213.
[7] Ellison, Yang, Effects of rotor eccentricity on
acoustic noise from induction machines, Proc. IEE,
Vol. 118, No. 1, 1971, pp. 174-184.
[8] Hartman, Lorimer, Undriven vibrations in brushless
DC motors, IEEE Trans. Magn., Vol. 37, No. 2,
2001, pp. 789-792.