Abstract
The cavitaion surge phenomenon was experimentally investigated for three types of flat plate helical inducer with different solidities and numbers of blades. It was found that the cavitation surge of three-bladed inducer occurs in larger NPSH range than that of two-bladed inducer with the identical solidity. In terms of the effect of solidity, it was found that the inducer with larger solidity suffered from the cavitation surge in smaller NPSH range, probably due to the reduced blade loading. In three bladed inducers, many additional instabilities were observed such as forward rotating cavitation, attached cavitation, surge like pulsation and so on.
