A NUMERICAL MODEL TO SIMULATE THE CAVITATING FLOWS

Abstract

The object of this paper is to propose a model to simulate steady and unsteady cavitating flows. In the engineering practice, cavitation flow is often modeled as a single-phase flow (mixture), where the cavitation area is handled as an area with the pressure lower than the vapor pressure. This approach always leads to the result, and the requirement of computer time is many times lower in comparison with multiphase flow models. The Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations are solved for the mixture of liquid and vapor, which is considered as a single-phase with variable density. The vaporization and condensation processes are controlled by barocline low. A transport equation with source terms is implanted in the code Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to compute the volume fraction of the vapor. The CFD code used is ANSYS CFX. The influence of numerical and the physical parameters are presented. The numerical results are compared to previous experimental measures. For steady flow, a SST turbulence model is adopted and LES for the unsteady flow.