Numerical Simulation of Cavitating Flow Past Cylinders

The cavitating flow simulation is of practical importance for many engineering systems, such as marine propellers, pump impellers, nozzles, injectors, torpedoes, etc. The present work has developed a base code for simulating cavitating flows past cylinders and hydrofoils. The governing equation is the Navier-Stokes equation based on homogeneous mixture model. The momentum and energy equation is in the mixture phase while the continuity equation is solved in liquid and vapor phase, separately. The solver employs an implicit preconditioning algorithm in curvilinear coordinates. The computations have been carried out for the cylinders with spherical, 1- and 0-caliber forebody and hydrofoil of ALE and NACA cross-section and, then, compared with experiments and other numerical results. Fairly good agreements with experiments and numerical results have been achieved. The present base code has shown the feasibility to solve the cavitating flow past supercavitating torpedo after the improvement for compressibility effects and interactions with hot exhaust gas of propulsive rocket.