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Synchronous rotating cavitation is known as one type of cavitation instability, which causes synchronous shaft vibration or head loss. On the other hand, cavitation in cryogenic fluids has a thermodynamic effect on cavitating inducers because of thermal imbalance around the cavity. It improves cavitation performances due to delay of cavity growth. However, relationships between the thermodynamic effect and cavitation instabilities are still unknown. To investigate the influence of the thermodynamic effect on synchronous rotating cavitation, we conducted experiments in which liquid nitrogen was set at different temperatures (74K, 78K, and 83K). We clarified the thermodynamic effect on synchronous rotating cavitation in terms of cavity length, fluid force, and liquid temperature. Synchronous rotating cavitation occurs at the critical cavity length of Lc∕h≅0.8, and the onset cavitation number shifts to a lower level due to the lag of cavity growth by the thermodynamic effect, which appears significantly with rising liquid temperature. Furthermore, we confirmed that the fluid force acting on the inducer notably increases under conditions of synchronous rotating cavitation.

Three types of cavitation instabilities through flat plate cascades, which are similar to “forward rotating cavitation,” “rotating-stall cavitation” and “cavitation surge” occurring in high-speed rotating fluid machinery, are represented numerically under the three-blade cyclic condition. A numerical method employing a locally homogeneous model of compressible gas-liquid two-phase medium is applied to solve the above flow fields, because this permits the entire flow field inside and outside the cavity to be treated through only one system of governing equations. In addition, the numerical method suites to analyze unsteady cavitating flow with a long time evolution. From the calculated results of the present numerical simulation with wide range of cavitation number and flow rate, we obtain a cavitation performance curve of the present three-blade cyclic cascade, analyze the aspects of unsteady cavitation, and discuss the characteristics and mechanisms of cavitation.

2-D unsteady cavity flows through hydrofoils in cascade which is the most fundamental element of turbomachinery are numerically calculated. In particular, attention was paid to instability phenomena of the sheet cavity in transient cavitation condition and the mechanism of break-off phenomenon was examined. A TVD MacCormack's scheme employing a locally homogeneous model of compressible gas-liquid two-phase media was applied to analyze above cavity flows. The present method permits us to treat the whole cavitating/noncavitating unsteady flow field. By analyzing numerical results in detail, it became clear that there are at least two mechanisms in the break-off phenomena of sheet cavity; one is that re-entrant jets play a dominant role in such a break-off phenomenon, and the other is that pressure waves propagating inside the cavity bring about an another type of break-off phenomenon accompanied with cavity surface waves.

Cavitation erosion is a material damage phenomenon caused by the repeated application of impulsive pressure on a material surface induced by bubble collapse, and the establishment of a method by which to numerically predict cavitation erosion is desired. In the present study, a numerical quantitative prediction method of cavitation erosion in a cavitating flow is proposed. In the present method, a one-way coupled analysis of a cavitating flow field based on a gas-liquid two-phase Navier–Stokes equation (Eulerian) and bubbles in the cavitating flow by bubble dynamics (Lagrangian) is used to treat temporally and spatially different scale phenomena, such as the macroscopic phenomenon of a cavitating flow and the microscopic phenomenon of bubble collapse. Impulsive pressures acting on a material surface are evaluated based on the bubble collapse position, time, and intensity, and the erosion rate is quantitatively predicted using an existing material-dependent relationship between the impulsive energy (square of the impulsive force) and the maximum erosion rate. The erosion rate on a NACA0015 hydrofoil surface in an unsteady transient cavitating flow is predicted by the proposed method. The distribution of the predicted erosion rate corresponds qualitatively to the distribution of an experimental surface roughness increment of the same hydrofoil. Furthermore, the predicted erosion rate considering the bubble nuclei distribution is found to be of the same order of magnitude as the actual erosion rate, which indicates that considering bubble nuclei distribution is important for the prediction of cavitation erosion and that the present prediction method is valid to some degree.

Rotating cavitation in inducers is known as one type of cavitation instability, in which an uneven cavity pattern propagates in the same direction as the rotor with a propagating speed ratio of 1.0-1.2. On the other hand, cavitation in cryogenic fluids has a thermodynamic effect because of the thermal imbalance around the cavity. To investigate the influence of the thermodynamic effect on rotating cavitation, we conducted experiments in which liquid nitrogen was set at different temperatures (74 K, 78 K and 83 K) with a focus on the cavity length. At higher cavitation numbers, super-synchronous rotating cavitation occurred at the critical cavity length of Lc/h approximately equal to 0.5 with a weak thermodynamic effect in terms of the fluctuation of cavity length. In contrast, synchronous rotating cavitation occurred at the critical cavity length of Lc/h approximately equal to 0.9-1.0 with a strong thermodynamic effect in terms of the unevenness of cavity length. Furthermore, we confirmed that the amplitude of the shaft vibration depended on the degree of the unevenness of the cavity length through the thermodynamic effect., 資料番号: AA0064094000, レポート番号: JAXA-RM-08-004

Growing interest in supercavitating foils, in hydraulic-machinery and ship-propeller applications, led to the experimental work here described. Laser Doppler Velocimetry (LDV) and high-speed photography were used to observe the behaviour of supercavitation and cavitation, especially near the separation point, in a two-dimensional subcritical flow around a smooth cylinder in a cavitation tunnel. Wall effects were negligible; experiments with and without ventilation were carried out. The results are presented and discussed. It was found that, contrary to the "smooth separation" that had been assumed in several previous investigations, the flow became detached rather abruptly in all cases, both with and without ventilation. Several other conclusions are drawn. See also Abstract No. 62,348 (June 1984).

To make clear the stochastic (random) behavior of cavitation desinence, we statistically analyzed the acoustic pressure pulses associated with the cavitation, and defined the desinence by introducing the threshold level selected for the pulse-detection and the control parameters, such as the mean desinent cavitation number, σ¯d, the standard deviation of random variable, σˆd, and those of the time interval between successive pulses. It is shown here that stochastic behavior takes place considerably in desinence, and varies significantly with the random quantities, as well as the air saturation rate of water.

In order to clarify the role of cavitation nuclei upon inception, the behavior of inception was carefully investigated in an extremely limited water flow through very small orifices less than 1.0 mm in diameter under a prescribed nuclei condition. The following facts of technical interest were determined: a) The desinent cavitation number (σd) decreased rapidly and exponentially with the orifice diameter d, up to one hundredth in magnitude; and b) the cavitation appearance in such limited flows was quite different from that in fully turbulent flows through larger orifices.

An “accurate” analysis based on momentum theorem is proposed for finite cavity cascade foils of arbitrary shape. Some numerical results are given which show that (i) In the existing cascade flow models, the momentum theorem is not always satisfied. Therefore, the cavity drag contains an error. (ii) Low drag cascade foils are considerably cambered in the rear half and should be used within a certain required incidence limit.