Modification of Energy Equation for Homogeneous Cavitation Simulation With Thermodynamic Effect

Abstract

In industrial applications, cryogenic liquids are sometimes used as the working fluid of fluid machineries. In those fluids, the thermodynamic suppression effect of cavitation, which is normally ignored in water at room temperature, becomes obvious. When evaporation occurs in the cavitation region, the heat is supplied from the surrounding liquid. Hence, the liquid temperature is decreased, and cavitation is suppressed due to the decrease in saturated vapor pressure. Therefore, the performance of the fluid machinery can be improved. Computational fluid dynamics, which involves the use of a homogeneous model coupled with a thermal transport equation, is a powerful tool for the prediction of cavitation under thermodynamic effects. In this study, a thermodynamic model for a homogeneous model is introduced. In this model, the source term related to the latent heat of phase change appears explicitly, and the degree of heat transfer rate for evaporation and condensation can be adjusted separately to suit the homogeneous model. Our simplified thermodynamic model coupled with the Merkle cavitation model was validated for cryogenic cavitation on a two-dimensional (2D) quarter hydrofoil. The results obtained during the validation showed good agreement (in both pressure and temperature profiles) with the experimental data and were better than existing numerical results obtained by other researchers.