A study of pump cavitation damage

The cavitation assessment for the space shuttle main engine high pressure oxidizer turbopump is documented. A model of the flow through the pump was developed. Initially, a computational procedure was used to analyze the flow through the inlet casing including the prediction of wakes downstream of the casing vanes. From these flow calculations, cavitation patterns on the inducer blades were approximated and the damage rate estimated. The model correlates the heavy damage on the housing and over the inducer with unsteady blade surface cavitation. The unsteady blade surface cavitation is due to the large incidence changes caused by the wakes of the upstream vanes. Very high cavitation damage rates are associated with this type of cavitation. Design recommendations for reducing the unsteady cavitation include removing the set of vanes closest to the inducer and modifying the remaining vanes.