EFFECTS OF TURBULENCE STRUCTURE ON THE CAVITATION OF TURBOMACHINERY

THIS RESEARCH PROJECT SHALL INVESTIGATE THE EFFECT OF TURBULENCE STRUCTURE ON CAVITATION IN TURBOMACHINERY. PHASEI WILL DEVELOP THE NECESSARY BUBBLE DIAGNOSTICS AND INTEGRATE THEM TO THE PHASE DOPPLER TECHNIQUE TO DETERMINE THE SIZE, VELOCITY, NUMBER DENSITY, MASS FLUX AND VOID FRACTION OF SPHERICAL & SPHEROIDAL BUBBLES PRESENT IN CAVITATING TURBOMACHINERY. PHASE I OBJECTIVES ARE: 1) ANALYZE LIGHT SCATTERING INTERFEROMETRY PROPERTIES OF SPHEROIDAL BUBBLES. 2) DEVELOP MULTIANGULAR LIGHT SCATTERING DETECTION METHOD TOSIZE SPHEROIDAL BUBBLES. 3) PERFORM PRELIMINARY EXPERIMENTS TO VERIFY THEORY AND TO DETERMINE MORPHOLOGY OF BUBBLES AND VALIDATE RESULTS WITH FLOW VISUALIZATION. IF SUCCESSFUL, PROJECT WILL PRODUCE FULL DIAGNOSTICS FOR THE STUDY OF ACTUAL CAVITATING FLOWS IN TURBOMACHINERY.