Cavitation modeling
From CFD-Wiki
Cavitation phenomena in physics is the phenomena of change in state (phase) of the matter (eg. water) from liquid to vapour due to pressure drop of the surrounding domain. This pressure drop usually happens when the liquid is in rapid motion (flow). The typical example of such phenomena is found in turbomachinery and hydrodynamics. In both cases this constitutes a limitation for the performances of the device that rotates the fluid because of the drawbacks of cavitation inception amongst which are:
- Vibrations
- Erosion
- Acoustic inconvenience
- Performance degradation
Modeling techniques
A number of methods exist for modeling cavitation. They can be divided into the following classes:
- Level-set/volume-of-fluid methods
- Boundary Element methods
- Bubble dynamics modeling
- Interfacial transport techniques
Cavitation codes:
- UNCLE-M - ARL/Penn. State - a preconditioned, homogenous, multiphase, Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes model with mass transfer
- CRUNCH - Craft-tech's RANS solver
- CAV2DBL - UT's two-dimensional panel method coupled with XFOIL boundary layer solver
- PROPCAV - UT's boundary element method for predicting cavitation on propellers
External links:
- Computational Hydrodynamics Laboratory at U.T. - Boundary element methods
- Penn State Computational Mechanics Group
- Dynaflow - Software for Bubble Dynamics modeling
- Combustion Research and Flow Technology Group
- Tech CAE's Blog posts on setting up a pump cavitation analysis in CFX. Part 1,Part 2
