The aim of this paper is to present the results obtained with a 3-D numerical method allowing the prediction of the cavitation behavior of a centrifugal pump and to compare this prediction to model tests. The influence of the diffuser on the pumpperformances, for a cavitating flow, is taken into account by performing coupled computations. The proposed method, which allows the performance drop prediction, consists of assuming the cavity interface as a free surface boundary of the computationdomain and in computing the single phase flow. The unknown shape of the interface is determined using an iterative procedure matching the cavity surface to a constant pressure boundary (P{sub}v). The originality of the method is that the adaptationprocess is done apart from the flow calculation, allowing to use any available code.
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