Cause of cavitation instabilities in three-dimensional inducer

Abstract

Alternate blade cavitation, rotating cavitation and cavitation surge in rocket turbopump inducers were simulated by a commercial CFD code. In order to clarify the cause of instabilities, the velocity disturbance caused by cavitation was obtained by subtracting the velocity vector under noncavitating condition from that under cavitating condition. It was found that there exists a disturbance flow towards the trailing edge of the tip cavity. This flow has an axial flow component towards downstream which reduces the incidence angle to the next blade. It was found that all of the cavitation instabilities start to occur when this flow starts to interact with the leading edge of the next blade. The existence of the disturbance flow was validated by experiments.