Numerical study on characteristics of 3D Cavitating Hydrofoil

Abstract

The commercial software ANSYS CFX, APDL and Workbench are applied for modeling the hydrodynamic and structural interactions and characteristics of an elastic hydrofoil by means of a two-way FSI method. The SST (Shear Stress Transport) turbulence model and the simplified Rayleigh-Plesset equations are employed for the cavitating flow simulation. Both CFX and APDL solvers are set to be transient. The fluid and solid computational domains are sequentially solved to simulate the interactions between the hydrofoil and the cavitating flow. The results show that the difference in stiffness of common metal materials has trifling effects on hydrofoil performance. But variations in cavitation number and angle of attack will dramatically affect the hydrodynamic and structural interactions and characteristics.