Cavitation Instabilities and Rotordynamic Effects in Turbopumps and Hydroturbines

The book provides a detailed approach to the physics, fluid dynamics, modeling, experimentation and numerical simulation of cavitation phenomena, with special emphasis on cavitation-induced instabilities and their implications on the design and operation of high performance turbopumps and hydraulic turbines. The first part covers the fundamentals (nucleation, dynamics, thermodynamic effects, erosion) and forms of cavitation (attached cavitation, cloud cavitation, supercavitation, vortex cavitation) relevant to hydraulic turbomachinery, illustrates modern experimental techniques for the characterization, visualization and analysis of cavitating flows, and introduces the main aspects of the hydrodynamic design and performance of axial inducers, centrifugal turbopumps and hydo-turbines. The second part focuses on the theoretical modeling, experimental analysis, and practical control of cavitation-induced fluid-dynamic and rotordynamic instabilities of hydraulic turbomachinery, with special emphasis on cavitating turbopumps (cavitation surge, rotating cavitation, higher order cavitation surge, rotordynamic whirl forces). Finally, the third part of the book illustrates the alternative approaches for the simulation of cavitating flows, with emphasis on both modeling and numerical aspects. Examples of applications to the simulation of unsteady cavitation in internal flows through hydraulic machinery are illustrated in detail

Fluid Dynamics of Cavitation and Cavitating Turbopumps - CISM Courses and Lectures

The course is aimed at providing the participants with a detailed introduction to the physics, fluid dynamics, modeling and numerical simulation of cavitation phenomena in engineering applications, with special emphasis on high performance turbopumps and their cavitation-induced instabilities. To this purpose the first part of the lectures will cover the more fundamental aspects of cavitation (nucleation, bubble dynamics, thermodynamic effects, cavitation erosion, stability of parallel bubbly flows) and the main kinds of cavitating flows (attached cavitation, cloud cavitation, supercavitation, ventilated supercavities, vortex cavitation, shear cavitation). The second part of the course will illustrate the alternative approaches for modeling and engineering simulation of cavitating flow. Finally, the third part of the lectures will focus on the hydrodynamics and instabilities of cavitating turbopumps (cavitation surge, rotating cavitation, higher order cavitation surge, rotordynamic whirl forces)