Visual Cavitation Studies of Mixed Flow Pump Impellers

Abstract

Three mixed flow impellers representing a wide range of design parameters were tested in a closed water loop to obtain correlations of the high-speed photographic records of the cavitation formations with various performance parameters. It was found that cavitation existed for all impellers at much higher values of NPSH than those associated with a finite drop in the impeller head rise. The cavitation formations in the vane channels of the impellers were observed to be cyclic in nature, whereas the cavitation near the leading edge of the vanes was more stable.