Experimental investigation on suction performance and cavitation instabilities of turbopumps with two different inducers

In the present study, the suction performance and the cavitation instabilities in turbo-pumps with two different inducers designed with different design incidence angle are experimentally investigated in the wide range of operating flow rate. Compared to the Inducer A, Inducer B is designed with larger incidence angle, therefore it has slightly larger inlet and outlet angles. The identical centrifugal impeller is used as a main impeller. As a result, the total head of pump with inducer B is confirmed to be larger than that with inducer B especially at large flow rates, while the shaft power is almost the same, resulting in the better efficiency with the inducer B. The suction performance is better with inducer B at large flow rates. Two kinds of instabilities, the cavitating whirling vortex and the surges are mainly observed for the both inducers, but they are limited at low flow rates. The occurrence ranges of these cavitation instabilities are wider with inducer B.