Abstract
The onset of cavitation causes head and efficiency of a main pump to be reduced significantly and generates vibration and noise. In order to avoid these phenomena, the inlet of the pump is fitted with a special rotor called an inducer, which can operate satisfactorily with extensive cavitation. The motivation of this study is to find out cavitation modes from the inducer inlet pressure signals and event characteristics from outlet ones at various operating conditions. The cavitation modes are analyzed by using a cross-spectral density of fluctuating pressures at the inducer inlet. The time-frequency characteristics of wall pressures downstream of the inducer are presented in terms of event frequency, its duration time, and number of events by using the Choi-Williams distribution.
