The cavitation behavior and suction performance of a pump are largely influenced by the geometry at the impeller eye. A number of geometric factors at the impeller eye have an influence on cavitation, such as, the inlet and hub diameters, blade inlet angles and incidence to upstream flow, blade number and thickness, blade passage throat area, surface roughness, blade leading edge profiling, etc. In this paper, we study the influence of blade leading edge profiles, keeping all other parameters as identical, on the cavitation behavior of an impeller. Leading edge profiles such as blunt, circular, elliptic, and parabola are considered and the effect of different profiles on cavitation inception, bubble growth, cavity length and NPSH-3% head drop performance are investigated. Experiments are performed on a cavitation visualization test rig and complemented by two-phase computational fluid dynamic (CFD) modeling and analysis.
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