<p>We conducted numerical simulations of the benchmark experiments of the pump sump conducted by Matsui et al. (2006 & 2015) and compared the simulation with the experimental data to investigate the effects of turbulence model, grid density and detection method of the vortices. We determined a threshold of the gas-liquid fraction function of VOF method (α) and the second invariant of velocity gradient tensor (Q2) to detect the air-entraining and submerged vortices by using vorticity, respectively. This method well detected the vortices and well reproduced the experiments for the RANS simulation using SST k-ω model. Large eddy simulation using Smagorinsky model, however, was sensitive to the grid system and difficult to reproduce the experimental vortex structures even for the finest grid system having 3.7 mil-lion cells.</p>