Experiments in Thermosensitive Cavitation of a Cryogenic Rocket Propellant Surrogate

Abstract

Cavitation is a phase-change phenomenon that may appear in practical devices, often leading to loss of performance and possible physical damage. Of particular interest is the presence of caviation in rocket engine pumps as the cryogenic fluids cavitate in impellers and inducers. Unlike water, which has been studied exhaustively, cryogenic fluids undergo cavitation with significant thermal effect. Past attempts at analyzing this behavior in water have led to poor predictive capability due to the lack of data in the regime defined as thermosensitive cavitation. Fluids flowing near their thermodynamic critical point have a liquid-vapor density ratio that is orders of magnitude less than typical experimental fluids, so that the traditional equation-of-state and cavitation models do not apply. Thermal effects in cavitation have not been fully investigated due to experimental difficulties handling cryogenics. This work investigates the physical effects of thermosensitive cavitation in a model representative of a turbopump inducer in a modern rocket engine. This is achieved by utilizing a room-temperature testing fluid that exhibits a thermal effect equivalent to that experienced by cryogenic propellants. Unsteady surface pressures and high speed imaging collected over the span of thermophysical regimes ranging from thermosensitive to isothermal cavitation offer both quantitative and qualitative insight into the physical process of thermal cavitation. Physical and thermodynamic effects are isolated to identify the source of cavity conditions, oscillations and growth/collapse behavior. Planar laser imaging offers an instantaneous look inside the vapor cavity and at the behavior of the boundary between the two-phase region and freestream liquid. Nondimensional parameters are explored, with cavitation numbers, Reynolds Numbers, coefficient of pressure and nondimensional temperature in a broad range. Results in the form of cavitation regime maps, Strouhal Number of cavity collapse, and cavity length offer a mechanistic analysis of the phenomenon. Linear stability analysis of the boundary is performed, as well as analysis of the thermal effects in the cavity and the oscillatory behavior of the cavity and reentrant jet. ( en )