With the recent interest in employing liquid hydrogen as a fuel source for energy production and transportation, predicting the performance of pumping systems which handle hydrogen has become an important issue in the design of such systems.&nbsp; Liquid hydrogen is a cryogenic fluid which exists at extremely low temperatures and presents a myriad of design challenges to ensure a safe, efficient, and robust fuel delivery system.&nbsp; In addition, the typical operating conditions for pumps handling liquid hydrogen are such that vapor formation due to cavitation is present in the flow, even when the head rise is relatively unaffected.&nbsp; Cavitation can cause severe damage to pump components and lead to shortened life and eventual failure, especially at the temperatures associated with liquid hydrogen.&nbsp;The present work was focused on validating CFD methods for accurately predicting cavitating flow in a pump inducer handling cryogenic hydrogen.&nbsp; The CFD code used in this study was Ansys CFX, which is a general-purpose commercial solver with models available for simulating cryogenic cavitation in turbomachinery.&nbsp;&nbsp; The specific model employed for cavitation utilized a Rayleigh-Plesset based multiphase formulation in conjunction with thermodynamic property tables appropriate for cryogenic liquid hydrogen.&nbsp;&nbsp; Adjustments to cavitation model parameters were introduced as a function of fluid temperature to account for the thermal suppression head effects that are present at cryogenic thermal conditions.&nbsp;The inducer geometry and operating conditions were derived from a publicly available source, NASA TM X-1360, and the results of the CFD analysis were compared to the experimental data provided in the report.&nbsp; Solutions were obtained for both non-cavitating and cavitating conditions, with good agreement being obtained between the simulations and data.&nbsp; The non-cavitating results were obtained over a range of flow coefficients to replicate the inducer pump curve, whereas the cavitating solution was developed for a single operating condition with the net positive suction head being adjusted to generate cavitation in the CFD simulations.&nbsp;

Numerical Predictions of Cavitating Flow Within a Liquid Hydrogen Inducer

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/GT/GT2021/volume/84898

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