A numerical study of unsteady cavitation on a hydrofoil by les and URANS method

Abstract

In this paper, the unsteady cavitation phenomena on a NACA0015 hydrofoil is numerically simulated by unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) method and Large Eddy Simulation (LES) in single-fluid approaches to multiphase modelling, respectively. It is observed that the large-scale structures and characteristic periodic shedding predicted by the URANS with the modified SST k-ω turbulence model show a good qualitative match with the experimental observations but with quantitative discrepancies, such as a different cavity length and volume, and a different location of shedding. Compared to the URANS results, the LES results reproduce more details of unsteady dynamics with an improved quantitative agreement.