Effect of the difference in slit locations on the suppression of cavitation instabilities in an inducer.

Abstract

Cavitation instabilities are caused by unsteady cavitation in the inducer in liquid rocket turbopumps. This phenomenon has a negative impact on pumps and must be suppressed. Our research group has proposed a method to suppress the instabilities by adding slits to the inducer blades, and previous studies was shown the effectiveness of this method. In this study, water experiments of inducers with slits at different locations were conducted. As a results, the vibration characteristics of cavitation in the slit inducers changed when the location of the slit was changed although the cavitation instabilities were successfully suppressed in all slit inducer. The visualized image of cylindrical surface of the axial flow pump was expanded into a two-dimensional plane to determine the time variation of the area of the tip leakage vortex cavitation generated in each blade. The suppression mechanism of cavitation instabilities in each slit location was discussed from the obtained unsteady image of cavity area in each blade in the slit inducers.