Fluid Dynamics of Cavitation and Cavitating Turbopumps - CISM Courses and Lectures

The course is aimed at providing the participants with a detailed introduction to the physics, fluid dynamics, modeling and numerical simulation of cavitation phenomena in engineering applications, with special emphasis on high performance turbopumps and their cavitation-induced instabilities. To this purpose the first part of the lectures will cover the more fundamental aspects of cavitation (nucleation, bubble dynamics, thermodynamic effects, cavitation erosion, stability of parallel bubbly flows) and the main kinds of cavitating flows (attached cavitation, cloud cavitation, supercavitation, ventilated supercavities, vortex cavitation, shear cavitation). The second part of the course will illustrate the alternative approaches for modeling and engineering simulation of cavitating flow. Finally, the third part of the lectures will focus on the hydrodynamics and instabilities of cavitating turbopumps (cavitation surge, rotating cavitation, higher order cavitation surge, rotordynamic whirl forces).