Research on cavitation characteristic of inducer

The inducer has significant effect on improving the cavitation characteristic of a centrifugal pump. The fact which can not be neglected is that the inducer itself is a kind of axial pump. Research on inducer's cavitation characteristic is very important. Several inducers were designed and modeled by Pro/E software. The mesh of flow field was done by ICEM and imported to ANSYS CFX to analyze the inducer's cavitation characteristic. The relationship between cavity length and head breakdown was discussed. With the decrease of NPSH, there is a slight increase in the head just prior to the decrease associated with head breakdown. This conclusion coincides with experimental results. The influence of backflow eddy on the inducer's cavitation characteristic was analyzed, and the change of backflow eddy in the process of cavitation was illustrated. It can be concluded that the correlation between the inducer head breakdown and the relative cavity length is very close which agrees well with the theoretical and experimental results. As the inlet pressure is decreased, inception almost always occurs in the tip vortex generated by the corner where the leading edge meets the tip. And backflow vortex gradually disappears in the process of cavitation.