Cloud cavitation with particular attention to pumps

Abstract

In many cavitating liquid flows, when the number and concentration of the bubbles exceeds some critical level, the flow becomes unsteady and large clouds of cavitating bubbles are periodically formed and then collapse when convected into regions of higher pressure. This phenomenon is known as cloud cavitation and when it occurs it is almost always associated with a substantial increase in the cavitation noise and damage. These increases represent serious problems in devices as disparate as marine propellers, cavitating pumps and artificial heart valves. This lecture will present a brief review of the analyses of cloud cavitation in simplified geometries that allow us to anticipate the behavior of clouds of cavitation bubbles and the parameters that influence that behaviour. These simpler geometries allow some anticipation of the role of cloud cavitation in more complicated flows such as those in cavitating pumps.