Analysis of rotating cavitation in a finite pitch cascade using a closed cavity model and a singularity method

A new method is proposed for the stability analysis of cavitating flow. In combination with the singularity method, a closed cavity model is employed allowing the cavity length freely to oscillate. An eigen-value problem is constituted from the boundary and supplementary conditions. This method is applied for the analysis of rotating cavitation in a cascade with a finite pitch and a finite chordlength. Unlike previous semi-actuator disk analyses (Tsujimoto et al., 1993 and Watanabe et al., 1997a), it is not required to input any information about the unsteady cavitation characteristics such as mass flow gain factor and cavitation compliance. Various kinds of instability are predicted. One of them corresponds to the forward rotating cavitation, which is often observed in experiments. The propagation velocity ratio of this mode agrees with that of experiments, while the onset range in terms of cavitation number is larger than that of experiments. The second solution corresponds to the backward mode, which is also found in semi-actuator disk analyses and identified in an experiment. Other solutions are found to be associated with higher order cavity shape fluctuations, which have not yet been identified in experiments.