Instability in a cavitating centrifugal pump

Abstract

It is known that low cycle system oscillation tends to occur in a piping system connected to a high-speed pump in which cavitation is occurring. The majority of papers on this subject discuss attempts at predicting this occurrence through linear transfer matrices of cavitating pumps, both experimentally and theoretically. There are, however, few papers that discuss low-cycle system oscillation occuring in reverse flow at a pump inlet. The following discusses three types of low-cycle system oscillation, which are defined by synthetic studies. The effects of NPSH, pump flow rate, rotational speed, and pipe length are clarified experimentally.