This work presents the numerical investigation of an unsteady cavitating flow around a balancing drum of a multistage pump. The main attention is focused on the cavitation phenomena, which occur in the rear part of the drum clearance, cause the erosion of the drum material and influence the pressure losses and the flow rate through the clearance. The one-way coupling of the URANS equations and the full Rayleigh-Plesset equation is employed to analyse the flow field as well as the dynamics of cavitating bubbles. The numerical simulations show that the erosion processes are highly influenced by shaft vibrations, namely by periodic deformations of the annular clearance in time. The calculated results are verified by erosion tests on a real pump.

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