The Numerical Analysis of Control Effect on Cavitation Instabilities in a Cascade With a Random Slit

Abstract

In the present study, numerical analysis was carried out around the a cyclic flat-plate cascade with a random slit, so as to examine the suppressing or controlling effect of the slit for cavitation instabilities such as a cavitation surge and rotating cavitation. These instabilities cause various problem for the turbomachinery, for example, rotating cavitation causes an asynchronous axial vibration, and cavitation surge causes a pulsation of working fluid by resonance phenomenon of the system. Especially, in liquid propellant rocket engine, suppression process for these instabilities bring increase in cost of the launch. Therefore, it is thought that to find effective suppression technique is significant for turbomachinery. In this paper, two types of the flat-plate three blades cascade which has a slit at different position (herein called “random slit”) was analyzed, and the results ware compared with the result of cascade without slit. As a result, the cavitation surge is perfectly suppressed in both of two types cascade with a random slit. Also, in the one case of them, sub-synchronous rotating cavitation and rotating stall cavitation is suppressed. Furthermore, super-synchronous rotating cavitation which is not observed in single-stage cascade, is detected by arranging a random slit. These results indicate the possibility of suppressing cavitation instabilities or controlling the type of the cavitation instabilities by the arrangement of the slit. Moreover, the head performance at the almost same cavitation number is equal or slightly increasing by arranging the random slit.