In the turbopump inducer of a liquid propellant rocket engine, cavitation is affected by acceleration that occurs during an actual launch sequence. Since cavitation instabilities such as rotating cavitations and cavitation surges are suppressed during launch, it is difficult to obtain data on the influence of acceleration on cavitation instabilities. Therefore, as a fundamental investigation, in the present study, a three-blade cyclic cascade is simulated numerically in order to investigate the influence of acceleration on time-averaged and unsteady characteristics of cavitation that arise in cascade. Several cases of acceleration in the axial direction of the cascade, including accelerations in the upstream and downstream directions, are considered. The numerical results reveal that cavity volume is suppressed in low cavitation number condition and cavitation performance increases as a result of high acceleration in the axial-downstream direction, also, the inverse tendency is observed in the axial-upstream acceleration. Then, the regions in which the individual cavitation instabilities occur shift slightly to a low-cavitation-number region as the acceleration increases downstream. In addition, in a downstream acceleration field, neither sub-synchronous rotating cavitation nor rotating-stall cavitation are observed. On the other hand, rotating-stall cavitation occurs in a relatively higher-cavitationnumber region in an upstream acceleration field. Then, acceleration downstream is robust against cavitation instabilities, whereas cavitation instabilities easily occur in the case of acceleration upstream. Additionally, comparison with the Froude number under the actual launch conditions of a Japanese liquid propellant rocket reveals that the cavitation performance will not be affected by the acceleration under the current launch conditions.

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The objective of this study was to investigate the oxygen transfer characteristics of an ejector aeration system. In order to evaluate the oxygen transfer performance of the ejector aeration system, a comparative experiment was conducted on a conventional blower aeration system. The effect of entrained air flow rate and aerating water temperature on the oxygen transfer efficiency was investigated. The dissolved oxygen concentration increased with increasing entrained air flow rate, but decreased with increasing aerating water temperature for two aeration systems. The volumetric mass transfer coefficient increased with increasing entrained air flow rate and with increasing aerating water temperature for both aeration systems. The average mass transfer coefficient for the ejector aeration system was about 20% and 42% higher than that of the blower aeration system within the experimental range of entrained air flow rates and aerating water temperatures.

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This paper deals with the CFD analysis of cavitating flow in the mixed-flow pump with the specific speed of 1.64 which suffers from a high level of noise and vibrations close to the optimal flow coefficient. The ANSYS CFX package has been used to solve URANS equations together with the Rayleigh-Plesset model and the SST-SAS turbulence model has been employed to capture highly unsteady phenomena inside the pump. The CFD analysis has provided a good picture of the cavitation structures inside the pump and their dynamics for a wide range of flow coefficients and NPSH values. Cavitation instabilities were detected at 70% of the optimal flow coefficient close to the NPSH3 value (NPSH3 is the net positive suction head required for the 3% drop of the total head of the pump).

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A two dimensional Darrieus-type turbine has been proposed for the hydropower utilization of extra-low head less than 2m. In a practical use of Darrieus-type hydro-turbine, head and flow rate may be varied temporally and seasonally. Considering that the cost advantage is required for the low head hydro turbine system, the Darrieus turbine should be operated with high efficiency in the wider range of flow rate possibly by using an additional device with simpler mechanism. In the present paper, an adjustment of inlet nozzle section by lowering the inlet nozzle height is proposed to obtain the preferable inlet velocity in low flow rate conditions. Effects of resulting spanwise partial inlet flow are investigated. Finally, an effective modification of inlet nozzle height over flow rate variation is shown.

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One centrifugal compressor is applied for refrigeration and its working substance is R134a. The operating points obtained by using similar conversion at different rotation speeds are compared with the numerical results. They keep consistent with each other while the rotation speeds are lower, but the error between them will become large with the increasing of the rotation speed. Then the operating points are obtained when the working substance is air by using two similar conversion methods separately. Based on the comparison, it can be obtained that the result of keeping the specific volume ratio of inlet and outlet is more accurate than the result of maintaining Ma number. Then the test result is compared with the similarity result and the numerical result when the working substance is air. It is obtained that the similarity result is more consistent with the test result better than the numerical result and the trend of efficiency and pressure ratio change with the flow rate is consistent with the test result. In the process of similar conversion, the efficiency η is no useful for similitude design and it has less influence on the conversion result.

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