Cavitation Flow Characteristics of Water and Liquid Oxygen in the Inducer Considering Thermodynamic Effect

Abstract

Clean energy liquid oxygen is more and more widely used in aerospace, but the research on the thermodynamic characteristics of liquid oxygen is still less. In this paper, a method for correcting the local saturated vapor pressure by thermodynamic effect is proposed, so we establish the Zwart modified cavitation model considering the thermodynamic characteristics. We choose the turbine pump inducer as the research object, and select liquid water and liquid oxygen at different temperatures as the fluid medium. Based on two different Zwart cavitation models, the cavitation flow characteristics of liquid water at different temperatures of 298 K, 320 K and 350 K are numerically simulated and analyzed, and the cavitation flow characteristics of liquid oxygen at different temperatures of 85 K, 90 K and 95 K are also numerically simulated and analyzed. According to the analysis of the simulation results, for liquid water at the temperature of 298–350 K, since the change range of its thermophysical parameters is very small, the inhibition of cavitation is not obvious, and the thermodynamic characteristics are not significant. For liquid oxygen, the cavitation effect is obvious at different temperatures. When the temperature increases gradually, the thermodynamic effect of liquid oxygen becomes more obvious, which can effectively inhibit the cavitation phenomenon of the inducer in the steady-state cavitation flow.

Keywords

• inducer
• cavitation
• Zwart model
• thermodynamic effect
• liquid water
• liquid oxygen