Cavitation Simulation with Consideration of the Viscous Effect at Large Liquid Temperature Variation

The phase change due to cavitation is not only driven by the pressure difference between the local pressure and vapor saturated pressure, but also affected by the physical property changes in the case of large liquid temperature variation. The present work simulates cavitation with consideration of the viscous effect as well as the local variation of vapor saturated pressure, density, etc. A new cavitation model is developed based on the bubble dynamics, and is applied to analyze the cavitating flow around an NACA0015 hydrofoil at different liquid temperatures from 25°C to 150°C. The results by the proposed model, such as the pressure distribution along the hydrofoil wall surface, vapor volume fraction, and source term of the mass transfer rate due to cavitation, are compared with the available experimental data and the numerical results by an existing thermodynamic model. It is noted that the numerical results by the proposed cavitation model have a slight discrepancy from the experimental results at room temperature, and the accuracy is better than the existing thermodynamic cavitation model. Thus the proposed cavitation model is acceptable for the simulation of cavitating flows at different liquid temperatures.