ON THE DYNAMIC BEHAVIOR OF TWO-DIMENSIONAL SHEET CAVITATION

A nonlinear method for simulating two-dimensional cavity-flow interaction in high velocity flows is suggested. Mathematical model for the dynamics of unsteady cavity boundary and the motion of the outside flow is set up, numerical and experimental investigations are made for the cavity flow past a two-dimensional bow- shaped body. The results show that because of the nonlinear effect, the trail of the cavity oscillates periodically, while the incipient point of the cavity almost remains fixed. Due to the unsteady oscilation of the cavity trail, the liquid pressure on the solid wall a little downstream of the reattachement point would rise sharply.

Effect of leading edge roughness on cavitation inception and development on thin hydrofoil

The cavitation incipience and development of water flow over a thin hydrofoil placed in the test section of high-speed cavitation tunnel were investigated.Hydrofoils with smooth and rough leading edge were tested for different upstream velocities and incidence angles.The observations clearly revealed that cavitation incipience is enhanced by roughness at incidence angle below 2°.This is in line with the former reports,according to whose roughness element decreases the wettability and traps a larger amount of gas.As a result,surface nucleation is enhanced with an increased risk of cavitation.Surprisingly,for higher incidence angles(>3°),it was found that cavitation incipience is significantly delayed by roughness while developed cavitation is almost the same for both smooth and rough hydrofoils.This unexpected incipience delay is related to the change in the boundary layer structure due to roughness.It was also reported a significant influence of roughness on the dynamic of developed cavitation and shedding of transient cavities.

New proposals for coupling cavitation models with laminar/turbulent transition models:application to a cavitation sheet over a NACA 16012

Since 1970s,several experimental works revealed that the cavitation sheet inception does not occur at the minimum pressure location but further downstream at the location of a laminar/turbulent transition.Most of the cavitation models use the saturation vapour pressure as a threshold to initiate the production of vapour and therefore,are not able to capture such flows.In this paper,three modifications of the Schnerr and Sauer cavitation model are proposed and coupled with an algebraic laminar/turbulent transition model.Application to a NACA 16012 profile shows the ability of the modifications to move the cavitation inception at the right location compared with the experiment.One of them,based on the multiplication of the evaporation term by the square of the turbulent intensity seems promising.

NUMERICAL VALIDATION OF COMPUTATIONAL MODEL FOR SHEET CAVITATING FLOWS

A computational modeling for the sheet cavitating flows is presented. The cavitation model is implemented in a viscous Navier-Stokes solver. The cavity interface and shape are determined using an iterative procedure matching the cavity surface to a constant pressure boundary. The pressure distribution, as well as its gradient on the wall, is taken into account in updating the cavity shape iteratively. Numerical computations are performed for the sheet cavitating flows at a range of cavitation numbers across the hemispheric headform/cylinder body with different grid numbers. The influence of the relaxation factor in the cavity shape updating scheme for the algorithm accuracy and reliability is conducted through comparison with other two cavity shape updating numerical schemes. The results obtained are reasonable and the iterative procedure of cavity shape updating is quite stable, which demonstrate the superiority of the proposed cavitation model and algorithms.

Numerical Simulation of the Flow around Two-dimensional Partially Cavitating Hydrofoils

In the present study, a new approach is applied to the cavity prediction for two-dimensional （2D） hydrofoils by the potential based boundary element method （BEM）. The boundary element method is treated with the source and doublet distributions on the panel surface and cavity surface by usethe of the Dirichlet type boundary conditions. An iterative solution approach is used to determine the cavity shape on partially cavitating hydrofoils. In the case of a specified cavitation number and cavity length, the iterative solution method proceeds by addition or subtraction of a displacement thickness on the cavity surface of the hydrofoil. The appropriate cavity shape is obtained by the dynamic boundary condition of the cavity surface and the kinematic boundary condition of the whole foil surface including the cavity. For a given cavitation number the cavity length of the 2D hydrofoil is determined according to the minimum error criterion among different cavity lengths, which satisfies the dynamic boundary condition on the cavity surface. The NACA 16006, NACA 16012 and NACA 16015 hydrofoil sections are investigated for two angles of attack. The results are compared with other potential based boundary element codes, the PCPAN and a commercial CFD code （FLUENT）. Consequently, it has been shown that the results obtained from the two dimensional approach are consistent with those obtained from the others.

Numerical investigation of unsteady sheet/cloud cavitation over a hydrofoil in thermo-sensitive fluid

The sheet/cloud cavitation is of a great practical interest since the highly unsteady feature involves significant fluctuations around the body where the cavitation occurs. Moreover, the cavitating flows are complicated due to the thermal effects. The present paper numerically studies the unsteady cavitating flows around a NACA0015 hydrofoil in the fluoreketone and the liquid nitrogen with particular emphasis on the thermal effects and the dynamic evolution. The numerical results and the experimental measurements are generally in agreement. It is shown that the temperature distributions are closely related to the cavity evolution. Meanwhile, the temperature drop is more evident in the liquid nitrogen for the same cavitation number, and the thermal effect suppresses the occurrence and the development of the cavitating flow, especially at a low temperature in the fluoroketone. Furthermore, the cavitating flows are closely related to the complicated vortex structures. The distributions of the pressure around the hydrofoil is a major factor of triggering the unsteady sheet/cloud cavitation. At last, it is interesting to find that one sees a significant thermal effect on the cavitation transition, a small value of σ/2ɑ is required in the thermo-sensitive fluids to achieve the similar cavitation transition that occurs in the water.

Experimental investigation and numerical analysis of unsteady attached sheetcavitating flows in a centrifugal pump

This paper studies the attached sheet cavitation in centrifugal pumps. A pump casted from Perspex is used as the test subject. The cavitation bubbles were observed in the entrance of the impeller and the drops of the head coefficients were measured under different operating conditions. A Filter-Based Model （FBM）, derived from the RNG k-e model, and a modified Zwart model are adopted in the numerical predictions of the unsteady cavitating flows in the pump. The simulations are carded out and the results are compared with experimental results for 3 different flow coefficients, from 0.077 to 0.114. Under four operating conditions, qualitative comparisons are made between experimental and numerical cavitation patterns, as visualized by a high-speed camera and described as isosurfaces of the vapour volume fraction ctv = 0.1. It is shown that the simulation can truly represent the development of the attached sheet cavitation in the impeller. At the same time, the curves for the drops of the head coefficients obtained from experiments and calculations are also quantitatively compared, which shows that the decline of the head coefficients at every flow coefficient is correctly captured, and the prediction accuracy is high. In addition, the detailed analysis is made on the vapour volume fraction contours on the plane of span is 0.5 and the loading distributions around the blade section at the midspan. It is shown that the FBM model and the modified Zwart model are effective for the numerical simulation of the cavitating flow in centrifugal pumps. The analysis results can also be used as the basis for the further research of the attached sheet cavitation and the improvement of centrifugal pumps.

Effect of water injection on the cavitation control:experiments on a NACA66(MOD)hydrofoil

The objective of this work is to investigate experimentally controlling cavitating flow over NACA66(MOD)hydrofoils by means of an active water injection along its suction surface.The continuous water vertically jets out of the chamber inside the hydrofoil through evenly distributed surface holes.Experiments were carried out in cavitation water tunnel.using high-speed visualization technology and the particle image velocimetry(PIV)system to study the sheetlcloud cavity behaviors.We studied the effects of this active control on cavity evolution with four kinds of jet flow at two different jet positions.We analyzed the effect of water injection on the mechanism of the cavitating flow control.The results were all compared with that for the original hydrofoil without jet and show that the active jet can effectively suppress the sheet/cloud cavitation characterized by shrinking the attached cavity size and breaking the large-scaled cloud sheding vortex cavity into small-scaled ones.The optimum effectiveness of cavitation suppression is affected by the jet flow rates and jet positions.The water injection at flow rate coefficient 0.0245 with the jet position of 0.45C reduces the maximum sheet cavity length by 79.4%and the cavity shedding is diminished completely,which gives the most superior effect of sheet cavitation suppression.The jet blocks the re-entrant jet moving upstream and weakens the power of re-entrant jet and thus restrains the cavitation development effectively and stabilizes the flow field.

On the numerical simulations of vortical cavitating flows around various hydrofoils

This paper reviews the numerical models of various cavitating flows around hydrofoils. Numerical models relating to cavitation flows, including mass transfer models and turbulence models, are summarized at first. Then numerical results and analysis of flow characteristics for the cavitating flows around twisted hydrofoils, truncated hydrofoil and tip leakage are discussed respectively. For mean flow fields, Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes（RANS） simulation associated with a kind of nonlinear turbulence model is found to be an economic and robust numerical approach for different kinds of cavitating flows including cloud cavitation, tip cavitation and tip leakage cavitation. To predict the fluctuations of pressure and velocity, large eddy simulation（LES） and detached eddy simulation（DES） are two effective approaches. Finally, a few open questions are proposed for future research.