an experimental investigation on fiat plate inducer

one of the most problems that limits use of turbomachines at high speed applications is cavitation. cavitation can damage casing and blades of turbopump, also can make unstability in system. inducer that was installed in front of main impeller can improve cavitation characteristic of system and increase static pressure just before entrance of centrifugal pump. specially in fuel feed system of liquid propellant rockets and airplanes that designer forced to make smaller components with better performance, inducer is commonly used. here to find the effect of viscosity in flow field of inducer, water was selected. with use of an experimental test rig, characteristic chart of q-h (flow rate - head) and axial distribution of wali static pressure were shown. the last curve, implicitly showed the effects of q on cavitation characteristic of flat plate inducer. a comparison between these results and previous papers in this subject was made and the effect of blade's number on cavitation characteristic was shown.