In the present study, numerical analysis of a cavitating three-blade cyclic flat-plate cascade was performed considering cavitation surge, which is a type of cavitation instability in pumping machinery. A numerical method employing a uniquely developed gas-liquid two-phase model was applied to solve the unsteady cavitating flow field, where compressibility is considered in the liquid phase of the model. From the numerical results, the surging oscillations by cavitation represented in the present cascade system can be classified into three types of cavitation surge based on the oscillation characteristics and the flow fields. In the first type, oscillation is composed of small-vortex cavitation and large scale pulsation, which correspond to “surge mode oscillation” whose frequency is not affected by cavity volume. The second type of oscillation is composed of sheet cavitation with a re-entrant jet, which corresponds to so-called “cavitation surge.” The final type of oscillation is subsynchronous rotating cavitation accompanied by pulsation, which is considered as superposition of system and local instability. In addition, the locking phenomenon of break-off frequency of cavitation in the surging oscillations and the mechanism of the pulsation phenomenon accompanied by re-entrant jet in the present cascade were investigated.
In this study, numerical analysis of cavitating three-blade cyclic flat-plate cascade is performed with paying attention to cavitation surge which is a type of cavitation instabilities. A numerical method employing "locally homogeneous model for compressible gas-liquid two-phase medium" is applied to solve the unsteady cavitating flowfield. From results of numerical analysis, few typical tendency of cavitation surge which is well known in experiments was reproduced numericaly, that frequency of cavitation surge decreases with lowering σ, and that cavitation surge is easy to occur at low flow rate condition. Additionaly, mechanism of pulsation phenomenon of cavitation surge in flat-plate cascade was clarified, that collapse pressure of cloud cavity in downstream of cascade propagates upstream on contact with re-entrant jet which is flowing backward inside a sheet cavity and causes oscillation in upstream pressure, also that negative angle of attack and choking of cascade throat are considered to cause of oscillation in flow rate. About dynamic transfer function of cavitation, certain degree of possibility is confirmed in quasi-steady mass flow gain factor M quasi and cavitation compliance K quasi for prediction of occurrence limit of cavitation instabilities. Additionally, for prediction of frequency of cavitation surge, it was confirmed that local cavitation compliance K local is more available than quasi-steady one.
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