Study of passive control study of the cavitation instability on a venturi profile

Abstract

This paper presents experimental and numerical results concerning the operation of a configuration that includes an axial pump and a bundle of tubes that mimics the cool source of a heat exchanger. The pump used in the tests has a low solidity and two blades designed in forced vortex, the tip clearance is approximately 3.87% of tip radius. The experimental measures of the characteristic curves and of the wall static pressure fluctuations signals upstream and downstream the pump and the exchanger were compared to the numerical results. The numerical simulations were carried out by using a Fluent code, with URANS (Unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes) approach and k-w SST turbulence model.