Fluctuation of Near-Wall Pressure During the Cavitation Bubble Collapse

Abstract

AbstractCavitation bubble collapse, which generates strong shock waves and high-velocity liquid jets, is responsible for the erosive damage to hydraulic components. In order to assess the fluctuation of near-wall pressure, in this work, an open-source package OpenFOAM is utilized for solving the Navier–Stokes equation. To track the liquid–air interface, the volume of fluid (VoF) method-based compressibleInterFoam solver is selected, and its shipped dynamic contact angle model is modified to obtain better accuracy when considering the wettability of substrates. Numerical methods are first validated by comparing with experiment, and then it is extended to study the effect of bubble diameter, pressure difference, and surface wettability on the fluctuation of near-wall pressure. Simulation results show that the initial sphere bubble goes through three stages of growth, shrinkage, and collapse near the wall. A larger bubble size leads to higher impact pressure due to the higher speed of the liquid jet. The difference in initial pressure in and out of the bubble has a great effect on the collapse behaviour. In addition, a hydrophobic surface, meaning hard liquid pining, can speed up the damping of near wall pressure. The findings in this work will be a guide to designing hydraulic components for limiting the erosive damages of cavitation bubble collapse.