Cavitation in a high-speed aviation axial piston pump over a wide range of fluid temperatures

The axial piston pump in aerospace applications needs to operate over a wide range of fluid temperatures from −54°C to 135 °C. The fluid properties at such extreme temperatures will significantly affect the cavitation that is one of the major limiting factors for the efficiency and reliability of aviation axial piston pumps. However, it appears that very little of the existing literature studies the effects of extreme fluid temperatures on the pump cavitation. This paper aims to examine the temperature effects on the cavitation in an aviation axial piston pump. First, we develop a three-dimensional (3D) transient computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model to investigate the pump cavitation and validate it experimentally. Second, we use the validated CFD model to investigate the temperature effects on the pump cavitation by changing the fluid properties including viscosity, density, and bulk modulus. The numerical results show that low fluid temperature makes the aviation axial piston pump suffer serious cavitation due to high viscosity, leading to delivery flow breakdown, unacceptable pressure pulsation, and delayed pressure built up. In contrast, high fluid temperatures have minor effects on the cavitation although they increase the pressure pulsation and built-up time slightly.