Analyses of 2D transient models for vaporous cavitating flows in reservoir-pipeline-valve systems

Abstract

Abstract The two-dimensional (2D) axial-symmetric model is applied to investigate the transient cavitating flows in the reservoir-pipeline-valve (RPV) system. Firstly, the MacCormack scheme is used to solve the governing equations, and compared to the numerical results of the one-dimensional (1D) model, the 2D head peaks and time-dependent evolutions predicted by five-region turbulence model in the frozen form are in better agreement with the experimental results, and the comparisons show that the maximum head relative errors of the 2D model are generally smaller than those of the 1D model. Then, further numerical simulations are carried out to investigate the performances of different turbulence models incorporated in the 2D model. The comparisons between the numerical results and the experimental ones show the head curves of the two-region turbulence model are similar to those of the five-region turbulence model, which indicates that the transient cavitating flows are insensitive to the magnitude and distribution of the eddy viscosity in the core region. In addition, the sensitivity to the quasi-steady form and the frozen form of the five-region turbulence model is implemented in the 2D model; the numerical results predicted by the two forms both agree better with the experimental results, as the non-dimensional parameter P increases.