Detailed investigation of cavitation and supercavitation around different geometries using various turbulence and mass transfer models

Abstract

In this paper cavitation around 3D hemispherical head-form body as well as disk and conical cavitators were studied numerically with particular emphasis on detailed comparisons of the various turbulence and mass transfer models. Dynamic and unsteady behaviors of cavitation were simulated using the large eddy simulation (LES) and k-ω SST turbulence models together with Kunz, Sauer and Zwart mass transfer models. In addition, the compressive volume of fluid (VOF) method is used to track the cavity interface. Simulation is performed under the framework of the OpenFOAM package. Discussions on the boundary layer separation, re-entrant jet, cavity cloud, vortices and pressure/volume fraction contours over a broad range of cavitation numbers, especially in very low cavitation numbers, are provided. Our numerical results compared fairly well with experimental data and a wide set of analytical relations. Our results indicate that the most accurate solutions will be obtained with the LES/ Kunz approach. Moreover, for the first time, we present a correlation between the cavity length and diameter for hemispherical head-form bodies.