• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.8 no.1 s.28
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• pp.23-29
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• 2005

Steady and unsteady cavitation characteristics of turbopump inducer were investigated in this paper. To investigate the effect of blade angle on the inducer performance, three inducers with inlet tip blade angle of $7.8^{\circ},\;7.0^{\circ},\;6.1^{\circ}$, respectively, were tested. For $7.8^{\circ},\;7.0^{\circ}$ inducers in the non-cavitating condition, head decreased linearly with flow rate, but head-flow rate curve had a dip at the flow coefficient ${\psi}=0.065$ for $6.1^{\circ}$ inducer. Attached cavitation and cavitation surge were found in the $7.8^{\circ},\;7.0^{\circ}$ inducers in the cavitation tests. During the attached cavitation one cell rotated at the same rotational speed as that of the inducer. The cavitation surge did not rotate and the oscillating frequency was $7{\sim}20\;Hz$. From the curve of the critical cavitation number versus flow rate, it was found that the steady cavitation performance of $6.1^{\circ}$ inducer was much lower than that of $7.8^{\circ},\;7.0^{\circ}$ inducers.

• 유체기계공업학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.12a
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• pp.333-339
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• 2003

Steady and unsteady cavitation characteristics of turbopump inducer were investigated in this paper. To see the effect of blade angle on the inducer performance, three inducers with inlet tip blade angle of $7.8^{\circ},\;7.0^{\circ},\;6.1^{\circ}$, respectively, were tested. For $7.8^{\circ},\;7.0^{\circ}$ inducers in the non-cavitating condition, head decreased linearly with flow rate, but head-flow rate curve had a dip at the flow coefficient ${\Phi}=0.065\;for\;6.1^{\circ}$ inducer. Rotating cavitation and cavitation surge were found in the $7.8^{\circ},\;7.0^{\circ}$ inducers in the cavitation tests. During the rotating cavitation one cell rotated at the same rotational speed as that of the inducer. The cavitation surge did not rotate and the oscillating frequency was $7{\sim}20\;Hz$. From the curve of the critical cavitation number versus flow rate, it was found that the steady cavitation performance of $6.1^{\circ}$ inducer was much lower than that of $7.8^{\circ},\;7.0^{\circ}$ inducers.

• Advances in aircraft and spacecraft science
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.309-333
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• 2020

The proposed study aims to numerically investigate the performance of hydrofoils in the context of amphibious aircraft application. In particular, we also study the effectiveness of a slotted hydrofoil in minimizing the cavitation phenomenon, to improve the overall water take-off performance of an amphibious aircraft. We use the ICON A5 as a base model for this study. First, we propose an approach to estimate the required hydrofoil surface area and to select the most suitable airfoil shape that can minimize cavitation, thus improving the hydrodynamic efficiency. Once the hydrofoil is selected, we perform 2D numerical studies of the hydrodynamic and cavitating characteristics of a non-slotted hydrofoil on ANSYS Fluent. In this work, we also propose to use a slotted hydrofoil to be a passive method to control the cavitation performance through the boundary layer control. Numerical results of several slotted configurations demonstrate notable improvement on the cavitation performance. We then perform a multiobjective optimization with a response surface model to simultaneously minimize the cavitation and maximize the hydrodynamic efficiency of the hydrofoil. The optimization takes the slot geometry, including the slot angle and lengths, as the design variables. In addition, a global sensitivity study has been carried and it shows that the slot widths are the more dominant factors.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.49-55
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• 2015

The pumped storage plant operates with quick change of the discharge as well as quick changes between pump mode and turbine mode. This study focuses on the cavitation analysis of a pump-turbine model because in turbo-machinery, cavitation can reduce the performance and shorten service life. The pump-turbine model system consists of 7 blades, 20 stay vanes (including tongue) and 20 guide vanes. This study adopts the Rayleigh-Plesset model as a cavitation model, which illustrates cavitation by using the air volume fraction method. The pump mode and turbine mode at the operating condition of partial loading, normal and excessive loading are analyzed to investigate the cavitation performance of the pump-turbine. It was observed that this pump-turbine design showed very good cavitation characteristics with no cavitation bubbles in all operating conditions. Overall value of air volume fraction of both mode at different operating condition are lower than 1, which confirms low possibility of cavitation occurrence at current situation.

• 유체기계공업학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.12a
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• pp.776-781
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• 2005

Cavitation is the most serious problem caused in developing high-speed turbopump, and use of an inducer is often made to avoid cavitation in main impeller. Thus, the inducer always operates under the worst condition of cavitation. If it could be possible to control and suppress cavitation in the inducer by some new device, it would also be possible to suppress cavitation occurring in all types of pumps. The purpose of our present study is to develop a new effective method of controlling and suppressing cavitation in an inducer using shallow grooves, named as "J-Groove", J-Groove is installed on the casing wall near the blade tip to use the pressure difference between high pressure region and low pressure region in the axial direction at the inlet of the inducer. The results show that proper combination of backward-swept inducer with J-Groove improves suction performance of turbopump remarkably in the range of partial flow rate as well as designed flow rate. The rotating backflow cavitation occurring in the range of low flow rate and the cavitation surge occurring in the vicinity of the best efficiency point can be almost fully suppressed by installing J-Groove.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.29 no.11 s.242
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• pp.1239-1247
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• 2005

Cavitation is the most serious problem in developing high-speed turbopump, and inducer is often used to avoid cavitation in main impeller. Thus, inducer is always operating in the worst .cavitation condition. If it is possible to control and suppress cavitation in inducer by some new device, it might be possible to suppress cavitation occurring in any type of pumps. The purpose of present study is to develop a new effective method of controlling and suppressing cavitation in inducer using shallow grooves, which is named 'J-Groove'. J-Groove is installed on the casing wall near the blade tip to use the pressure difference between high pressure region and low pressure region of the inducer in an axial direction. The results show that proper combination of backward-swept inducer with J-Groove improves suction performance of turbopump remarkably in the range of partial flow rate as well as designed flow rate. The rotating backflow cavitation occurring in the range of low flow rate and the cavitation surge occurring in the vicinity of the best efficiency point can be almost suppressed by installing J-Groove.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.18-25
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• 2008

Recent trends of a centrifugal pump are high speed in rotation and high pressure in head with high efficiency to meet the demands of industries. However, the newly developed pumps make trouble of pressure pulsation in the pumping system by performance instability of the pump. Moreover, cavitation, which is a main obstacle of high rotational speed in the pump, occurring in an impeller gives serious damages to the impeller and casing wall. The purpose of present study is not only to develop a simple method to improve pump performance but also to suppress the occurrence of cavitation in the centrifugal pump by use of J-Groove. J-Groove is a shallow groove installed on the casing wall in the meridional direction. The application of J-Groove to a centrifugal pump with a new type impeller of "semi-closed impeller" has proved its effectiveness as a useful countermeasure of the unstable pump performance and cavitation. The results show that the combination of semi-closed impeller and J-Groove can be applied successfully and improves both the pump performance and suction performance.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.125-138
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• 2015

In this study, hydrodynamic performance of a 400 mm diameter horizontal axis marine current turbine model was tested in a cavitation tunnel with 1.21 m x 0.8 m cross-section for over a range of tip speed ratios. Torque and thrust data, as well as cavitation visualizations, for certain operating conditions were acquired. Experimental results indicated that the turbine can be exposed to significant amount of sheet and cloud cavitation over the blades along with vortex cavitation at the blade tips. Inception and distribution of cavitation along the blades of the model turbine were then modelled numerically for design operating conditions using a vortex lattice method. The method was also applied to a turbine tested previously and obtained results were compared with the data available. The comparison between simulation results and experimental data showed a slight difference in terms of span-wise extent of the cavitation region. The cloud and tip vortex cavity observed in experiments cannot be modelled due to the fact that the VLM lacks the ability to predict such types of cavitation. Notwithstanding, the use of such prediction methods can provide a reasonably accurate approach to estimate, therefore take the hydrodynamic effects of cavitation into account in design and analysis of marine current turbines.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.61 no.3
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• pp.161-169
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• 2024

In order to investigate cavitation performance for the azimuth thruster in Large Cavitation Tunnel (LCT), the cavitation test apparatus was designed and manufactured. Generally the model scale is determined by the pod dynamometer with about 70mm diameter. Recently as ships with azimuth thruster have become bigger, the problem of the model ship installation was occurred. The model ship with pod dynamometer couldn't be installed in the LCT test section. The cavitation test apparatus and technique which can conduct the cavitation test without pod dynamometer were developed. The cavitation tests were conducted in torque identity method instead of thrust identity method. The target ship with azimuth thruster is 18K LNG bunkering vessel. As the full-scale ship test was conducted, the model cavitation tests were conducted at the same operating conditions. The fluctuating pressure levels of the full-scale ship were compared to those of the model tests. Another model cavitation test was conducted in the foreign institute and the cavitation observation results were compared to those of LCT. Through the comparison with the existing results, it is thought that the cavitation test for the azimuth thruster can be conducted in torque identity method.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2001.06e
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• pp.637-642
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• 2001

Performance and cavitation characteristics of a turbo pump inducer which is designed for oxygen pump is experimentally investigated. It is found that the static performance of inducer is dependent on the location of inlet pressure measurement and that enough distance from inducer is ensured for accurate evaluation of performance. With the increase of flow rate. NPSH tends to decrease as opposed to pump characteristics, which seems to be due to the cavitation region.