Abstract
Vapor production through cavitation extracts the latent heat of evaporation from the surrounding liquid, which decreases the local temperature, and hence the local vapor pressure in the vicinity of cavity. This is called thermodynamic/thermal effect of cavitation and leads to the good suction performance of cryogenic turbopumps. We have already established the simple analysis of partially cavitating flow with the thermodynamic effect, where the latent heat extraction and heat transfer between the cavity and the ambient fluid are taken into account. In the present study, we carry out the unsteady analysis to obtain the unsteady cavitation characteristics such as cavitation compliance and mass flow gain factor, which are known to be important parameters for cavitation instabilities appearing in cavitating inducers. It is found that the thermodynamic effect on the cavitation characteristics becomes significant when the cavity becomes longer and the trailing edge approaches the throat of the blade passage.
