• International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.240-253
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• 2015

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the applicability of mass transfer cavitation models and determine appropriate numerical parameters for cavitating flow simulations. CFD simulations were performed for a NACA66 hydrofoil at cavitation numbers of 1.49 and 1.00, corresponding to steady sheet and unsteady sheet/cloud cavitating regimes using the Kubota and Merkle cavitation models. The Merkle model was implemented into CFX by User Fortran code. The Merkle cavitation model is found to give some improvements for cavitating flow simulation results for these cases. Turbulence modeling is also found to have an important contribution to the prediction quality of the simulations. The relationship between the turbulence viscosity modification, in order to take into account the local compressibility at the vapor/liquid interfaces, and the predicted numerical results is clarified. The limitations of current cavitating flow simulation techniques are discussed throughout the paper.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.94-100
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• 2012

In this paper, the cavitating flows around a hydrofoil have been numerically investigated by using a 2-d multi-phase RANS flow solver based on pseudo-compressibility and a homogeneous mixture model on unstructured meshes. For this purpose, a vertex-centered finite-volume method was utilized in conjunction with 2nd-order Roe's FDS to discretize the inviscid fluxes. The viscous fluxes were computed based on central differencing. The Spalart-Allmaras one equation model was employed for the closure of turbulence. A dual-time stepping method and the Gauss-Seidel iteration were used for unsteady time integration. The phase change rate between the liquid and vapor phases was determined by Merkle's cavitation model based on the difference between local and vapor pressure. Steady state calculations were made for the modified NACA66 hydrofoil at several flow conditions. Good agreements were obtained between the present results and the experiment for the pressure coefficient on a hydrofoil surface. Additional calculation was made for cloud cavitation around the hydrofoil. The observation of the vapor structure, such as cavity size and shape, was made, and the flow characteristics around the cavity were analyzed. Good agreements were obtained between the present results and the experiment for the frequency and the Strouhal number of cavity oscillation.