Comparative analysis of verified numerical simulation of cavitation based on the Rayleigh – Plesset model for liquid propellant rocket engine pumps

The turbopump unit is one of the main units of a liquid propellant rocket engine. Ensuring the operability and the possibility of continuous supply of fuel and oxidizer components with a given flow rate and pressure throughout the entire operation cycle of a liquid-propellant rocket engine is one of the main tasks in the design of a heat pump. A negative effect that manifests itself in the case of a local decrease in pressure to the pressure of saturated steam is cavitation.

Currently, in connection with the growth of the computing power of modern computer systems, the methods of computational fluid dynamics (Сomputational Fluid Dynamics, CFD) are increasingly being used to test the anti-cavitation parameters of the pump in various areas of general mechanical engineering. For the rocket and space industry, which has special requirements for reliability, more statistical data is needed. At the moment, there is no cavitation model capable of fully simulating the entire process of nucleation, growth and collapse of a cavitation bubble. However, there are a number of simplified models of this process, among which we can single out the numerical model Zwart – Gerber – Belamri, designed to simulate the cavitation flow in pumps. The mentioned model is the most suitable and is applied in all the works discussed below.

This paper analyzes the experimental data and the results of numerical simulation of pumps with various parameters of flow, pressure and geometry. In the course of work with the model, calculations were performed in the ANSYS environment. In the final part, a conclusion was made about the relationship between the characteristics and applicability of the Zwart – Gerber – Belamri model to the design of the cavitation flow in the HPA LPRE taking into account the peculiarities of the pump operation.