Cavitation of turbo pumps

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Fluid Dynamics Of Turbo pumps Cavitation

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Cavitation is the development of vapor structures in an originally liquid flow. Contrary to boiling, the phase change takes place at almost constant temperature and is due to a local drop in pressure generated by the flow itself. 

The occurrence of low pressure regions in flows is a well-known phenomenon. For example, in the case of a Venturi, i.e. a converging duct followed by a diverging one, the velocity is maximum at the throat where the cross section is minimum. Then, according to Bernoulli equation, the pressure is minimum there and the risk of cavitation is maximum.

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The chapter ends with a brief presentation of a cavitation model based on the Rayleigh Plesset equation and often used for simulation. The liquid is assumed to carry cavitation nuclei and the Rayleigh-Plesset equation, which models the evolution of individual bubbles in the cluster, is coupled to Navier-Stokes equations. Such a technique is appropriate to the modeling of complex real cavitating flows, as for instance cloud cavitation generated by a pulsating leading edge cavity.

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