The turbopump is a core component of liquid rocket engines, driving fuel and oxidizer pumps via a gas turbine. Cavitation in the inducer of high-speed turbopumps directly affects rocket launch reliability. Recently, the research group led by Professor Zhang Desheng at the Fluid Center has made new advances in understanding multiphase hydraulic instabilities associated with inducer cavitation in turbopumps. Their study, entitled “Effect of cavitation structures and flow rates on pressure pulsation in the inducer: An experimental investigation”, has been published in the International Journal of Multiphase Flow, a leading international journal in the field of multiphase flows. Jiangsu University is the first-affiliated institution on the paper. The first author is Zhang Hui, a doctoral student at the Fluid Center, with Professor Zhang Desheng serving as the corresponding author.

The team identified three typical cavitation types in the turbopump inducer under different operating conditions, mapping the cavitation evolution across the full operating range. At 0.6–0.8 Qd, hub-vortex cavitation and backflow-vortex cavitation occur; at 0.8–1.0 Qd, vertical-vortex cavitation is present; and at 1.0–1.2 Qd, swirling-vortex cavitation is observed. Tip-leakage vortex cavitation was found to occur under all operating conditions.

A quantitative model was developed linking transient pressure pulsations to cavitation dynamics. The study revealed that cavitation shedding and collapse at low flow rates (0.6–0.8 Qd) induced high-frequency pressure pulsations exceeding 636 Hz, while large flow rates (1.0–1.2 Qd) produced only low-frequency pulsations below 322 Hz. This work achieved a full-spectrum mapping of inducer cavitation behaviors, elucidating the cavitation–pressure dynamic coupling mechanism, and confirmed that cavitation collapse at low flow rates is the primary source of high-frequency pulsation. These insights provide a theoretical foundation for predicting and suppressing cavitation instabilities in aerospace turbopumps.

The research was jointly supported by the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (Grant No. 52425903) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China–Joint Key Project (Grant No. U2106225).

Full paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmultiphaseflow.2025.105272