Investigation on Unsteady Cavitation Flow and Excited Pressure Fluctuations in Regulating Valve

A multi-field synchronous measurement system for the cavitation flow in a regulating valve was established. The system combines a high-speed full-flow field display system with a pressure measurement system to realize the simultaneous acquisition of cavitation shapes and pressure pulsations. Cavitation flow occurs near the throttle orifice, which is obviously a quasi-periodic behavior. The unsteady cavitation flow mainly includes three stages: the growth of the attached cavity, the fracture and shedding of the attached cavity and the growth and collapse of the free cavity. The time evolution of the cavitation behaviors is highly related with excited pressure fluctuations. With the increasing attached cavity area, the corresponding pressure in the flow field decreases slowly. When the attached cavity falls off and develops downstream, the cavity area decreases gradually, and the pressure increases gradually. When the free cavity shrinks and collapses, the pressure in the flow field reaches the peak value. The pressure pulsation and the change of cavity area have the same dominant frequency, around 2000 Hz, at the monitoring point in the upstream, throat and expansion monitoring points. Furthermore, with increasing inlet pressure, the mean and variance values of cavitation area become larger, and the excited pressure fluctuation at each measuring point becomes more intense. The mean value of pulsating pressure at the throat gradually increases, while the pressure in the expansion section presents a downward trend. The variance of pressure pulsation and the maximum pressure also increase gradually with the increase in inlet pressure. The change of cavitation area and the pressure pulsation in the regulating valve complement each other. The results in this paper could provide experimental guidance on optimizing the structure of the valve, inhibiting cavitation occurrence and prolonging the service life of the valve.

Quasi-periodic forces and conditionally averaged characteristics of unsteady cavitation flow around a hydrofoil

Large-eddy simulations are performed to investigate the cavitating flow around two dimensional hydrofoil section with angle of attack of 9° and high Reynolds number of 1.3×106. We use the Schnerr-Sauer model for accurate phase transitions modelling. Instantaneous velocity fields are compared successfully with PIV data using the methodology of conditional averaging to take into account only the liquid phase characteristics as in PIV. The presence of two frequencies in a spectrum corresponding to the full and partial cavity detachments is analysed.

Experimental and Numerical Investigation On the Transient Cavitating Flows in a Mixed Flow Pump with Different Number of Blades At Startup

The objective of this paper is to experimentally and numerically investigate the transient cavitation flow during the startup process of mixed flow pump with emphasis on studying the influence of blade numbers. The transient cavitation simulation was studied based on the improved SST k-ω turbulence model and the Zwart cavitation model. Firstly, in order to obtain the relationship between transient flow rate and the variation of rotational speed at startup, a theoretical analysis based on the fast transients of centrifugal pump was first applied to mixed flow pump and was verified by the current experiment study. Subsequently, the influence of blade number on the cavitation flow in the startup was studied. It is found that the transient cavitation could be classified into four stages regardless of the number of blades: no cavitation stage, the cavitation growth stage, the cavitation reduction stage and the cavitation stabilization stage. However, the blade number does have an impact on the spatial-temporal evolution of cavitation. More specifically, when the blade number increases, the initial cavitation appeared lately, the coverage area of the triangular cavitation cloud and sheet cavitation both decreased, and the increase in blade number has a better inhibitory effect on the sheet cavitation at the cavitation growth stage, and can make sheet cavitation disappear more quickly at the cavitation reduction stage.

Unsteady cavities near the hydrofoil with a small aspect ratio

Using digital processing of high-speed visualization data on a cavitation flow near NACA hydrofoil with critically low aspect ratio, the frequencies of the formation and separation of cavities in the flow are identified. It is shown that in the case of development of cloud cavitation the main dimensionless frequency varies within 0.4, which corresponds to the type of internal instability. The Strouhal number corresponds to the frequency of attached cavity occurrence and varies in range from 0.6 to 0.8. The Strouhal numbers calculated in third mode exceed 1. This mode corresponds to the forming of very small cavities near the leading edge of hydrofoil.

Cavitation Flow Simulation and Experiment Research in Inducer

The inducer is a kind of special axial pump, which is widely used in industry communities, such as aerospace delivery systems and medical equipment. Inducer hydraulic performance is impacted sensitively by flow field cavitation. The external characteristic parameters of the turbopump are closely related to the cavitation in the inducer. The generation and changes of the cavitation in the inducer are the root cause of the drop in the turbopump head. The authors first take a low-temperature liquid rocket engine inducer as the research object, bring the numerical calculation and the visual test method to show the law of the generation and change of cavitation in the inducer and its correspondence with the external characteristic parameters of the turbopump, which explain the quantitative correspondence between the cavitation mode of the inducer and the macroscopic external characteristic curves of wheel pumps from a microscopic perspective. The numerical calculation method of cavitation flow field is introduced and the visualization test method is implemented to a proposed platform. The experimental results show that the numerical calculation results are in good agreement with the visualization test results, which indicate that the actual numerical method is practical and feasible for the calculation of the cavitation flow field in inducers. Finally, the pressure fluctuation frequency characteristic is obtained through the experimental and calculation post-process.

Numerical investigation on fluid dynamic characteristics around shoulder ventilation of submarine-launched vehicle

In order to study the influence of the ventilating cavitation flow at the shoulder of a submerged-launched vehicle on the surface hydrodynamic characteristics, a three-dimensional potential model for the shoulder ventilation of the vehicle was established based on the homogeneous multiphase flow theory, standard RNG k-ε model, Singhal cavitation model and overlapping grid technology, and the numerical simulation of the unsteady evolution process of the ventilated cavitation flow was carried out, and the cavitation flow morphology evolution, surface pressure distribution and resistance characteristics under different ventilation rates were compared. The results showed that the thickness and length of the ventilated cavitation flow in the early stage of fusion continue increased with the increasing of ventilation volume, and its thickness and length changed slightly in the later stage; when the exhaust position did not change and the ventilation volume was within a certain range, the differential pressure resistance coefficient and viscous resistance coefficient decreased with the increasing of internal pressure of the ventilated cavity.