Experimental investigation of cavitation instabilities in inducer with different tip clearances

To investigate the effect of tip clearance size on cavitation characteristics in a turbopump inducer, a series of experiments have been conducted in a newly developed visualization test facility using room temperature water as working fluid. The pressure fluctuations near the tip region were collected, and the cavity structures under various conditions were documented by a high-speed camera. It is found that large tip clearance distinctly reduces both the non-cavitation and cavitation performance. Three cavitation instabilities, super-synchronous rotating cavitation, synchronous rotating cavitation and cavitation surge have been carefully identified through combination of cross-correlation analysis of pressure signals and visualization results. Large tip clearance displays a remarkable stabilization effect on pressure fluctuation, cavitation surge totally disappears, and the range of occurrence of synchronous rotating cavitation becomes smaller for the large tip clearance, whereas super-synchronous rotating cavitation only occurs in the large tip clearance. The cavitation areas are smaller at large tip clearance, while the flow channels are more seriously choked when cavitation occurs heavily in comparison with those at small tip clearance, which may be responsible for the worse cavitation performance.