**Qiaorui Si 1, Chunhao Shen 1, Asad Ali 1, Rui Cao 1, Jianping Yuan <sup>1</sup> and Chuan Wang 2,\***


**\*** Correspondence: wangchuan@ujs.edu.cn; Tel.: +86-1505-085-4169

Received: 31 October 2019; Accepted: 25 November 2019; Published: 4 December 2019

**Abstract:** Miniature drainage pumps with a radial blade are widely used in situations with critical constant head and low noise requests, but the stable operation state is often broken up by the entraining gas. In order to explore the internal flow characteristics under gas–liquid two phase flow, pump performance and emitted noise measurements were processed under different working conditions. Three-dimensional numerical calculations based on the Euler inhomogeneous model and obtained experimental boundaries were carried out under different inlet air void fractions (IAVFs). A hybrid numerical method was proposed to obtain the flow-induced emitted noise characteristics. The results show there is little influence on pump characteristics when the IAVF is less than 1%. The pump head slope degradation was found to increase with air content. The bubbles adhere to the impeller hub on the blade's suction side and spread to the periphery with a big IAVF, leading to unstable operation. It is obvious that vortices appear inside the impeller flow passage as IAVF reaches 6.5%. The two-phase flow pattern has a small effect on the characteristic frequency distribution of pressure fluctuation and emitted noise, but the corresponding pulsation intensity and noise level will increase. The study could provide some reference for low noise design of the drainage pump.

**Keywords:** miniature drainage pump; gas-liquid two-phase flow; radiate noise; pressure
