Influence of the empirical coefficients of cavitation model on predicting cavitating flow in the centrifugal pump

Abstract

The phenomenon of cavitation is an unsteady flow, which is nearly inevitable in pump. It would degrade the pump performance, produce vibration and noise and even damage the pump. Hence, to improve accuracy of the numerical prediction of the pump cavitation performance is much desirable. In the present work, a homogenous model, the Zwart-Gerber-Belamri cavitation model, is considered to investigate the influence of the empirical coefficients on predicting the pump cavitation performance, concerning a centrifugal pump. Three coefficients are analyzed, namely the nucleation site radius, evaporation and condensation coefficients. Also, the experiments are carried out to validate the numerical simulations. The results indicate that, to get a precise prediction, the approaches of declining the initial bubble radius, the condensation coefficient or increasing the evaporation coefficient are all feasible, especially for declining the condensation coefficient, which is the most effective way.

Keywords

• Cavitation flow
• Centrifugal pump
• Experiment
• Numerical simulation