Computational cavitation flows at inception and light stages on an axial-flow pump blade and in a cage-guided control valve

Abstract

Cavitation flows induced around an axial-flow pump blade and inside a high pressure cage-type valve are simulated by a two-dimensional unsteady Navier-Stokes analysis with the simplest treatment of bubble dynamics. The fluid is assumed as a continuum of homogeneous dispersed mixture of water and vapor nuclei. The analysis is aimed to capture transient stages with high amplitude pressure change during the birth and collapse of the bubble especially at the stage of cavitation inception. By the pump blade analysis, in which the field pressure is moderate, cavitation number of the inception and locations of developed cavitation are found to agree with experimental results in a wide flow range between high incidence and negative incidence. In the valve flow analysis, in which the water pressure of 5MPa is reduced to 2MPa, pressure change responding to the bubble collapse between the vapor pressure lower than 1 KPa and the extreme pressure of higher than 104 KPa is captured through a stable computation. Location of the inception bubble and pressure force to the valve plug is found agree well with the respective experimental features.