A review of cavitation dynamics in liquid rocket engine turbopump inducers

Cavitation dynamics, such as cavitation surge and rotating cavitation, are natural performance limits for turbopump inducers and pose a significant risk to the development and operation of liquid rockets. In the last 63 years, progress has been made in understanding cavitation instabilities and their relationship to cavitation number, inlet flow coefficient, rotating speed, inducer size, and thermal effects. However, we are still unable to predict the cavitation behavior of a real inducer installed in rocket engines or contribute much to the design of a more cavitation-resistant machine. This paper comprehensively reviews findings from computational fluid dynamics simulations, reduced-order modeling, and experiments in cryogenic fluids and water, focusing on the effects of compressibility on multiphase flow calculations, the assessment of cavitation compliance and mass flow gain factor, and their influences on cavitation stability analysis, as well as the transfer function for cavitating inducers. This review will provide insights for future research to achieve more accurate performance predictions, improve flow modeling, and enhance the interpretation of experimental results.