Numerical study of unsteady cavitating flows with RANS and DES models

Unsteady cavitating flow with high Reynolds number and significant instability commonly exists in fluid machinery and engineering system. The high-resolution approaches, such as direct numerical simulation and large eddy simulation, are not practical for engineering issues due to the significant cost in the computational resource. The objective of this paper is to provide the approach with Detached-Eddy Simulation (DES) model based on the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations for predicting unsteady cavitating flows. The credibility of the approach is validated by a set of numerical examples of its application: the unsteady cavitating flows around the two-dimensional (2D) Clark-Y hydrofoil and the three-dimensional (3D) blunt body. It is found that the calculated cavity shapes, cavity lengths and unsteady characteristics by DES model agree well with the experimental measurements and observations. Further analysis indicates that the turbulent eddy viscosity around the cavity and wake region is well predicted by the DES model, which results in the development of large-scale vortexes, and further cavitation instability. The DES model, which exhibits a significantly unsteady 3D behavior, is a more comprehensive turbulence model for unsteady cavitating flows.

Modeling and Computation of Unsteady Cavitating Flows Involved Thermal Effects Using Partially Averaged Navier–Stokes Method

The Partially Averaged Navier–Stokes (PANS) method is assessed with various values of the control parameters ([Formula: see text]–1.0, [Formula: see text]) by performing unsteady cavitating flows around a NACA0015 hydrofoil in a surrogate fluid of fluoroketone. Available experimental data of the cavity evolution and pressure are utilized to validate and evaluate the computational method. The results show that decreasing the control parameter [Formula: see text] can help to avoid the overestimations of the turbulence viscosity near the rear region of the cavity and can resolve more scales turbulence structure. The control parameter [Formula: see text] yields good predictions on cavitation shedding dynamics behavior and pressure distribution. Furthermore, the temperature around the hydrofoil undergoes a strong evolution that is contributed by the local evaporation and condensation processes. Interestingly, there are significant unsteady characteristics along the chordwise and spanwise directions of the hydrofoil. Finally, the thermal effect on cavitating flows is associated with the physical properties of fluid media. Evaporative cooling effects are more pronounced at high temperature and subsequently suppress the intensity of cavitation.