Numerical analyses of ventilated cavitation over a 2-D NACA0015 hydrofoil using two turbulence modeling methods

Abstract

The present paper studies the ventilated cavitation over a NACA0015 hydrofoil by numerical methods. The corresponding cavity evolutions are obtained at three ventilation rates by using the level set method. To depict the complicated turbulent flow structure, the filter-based density corrected model (FBDCM) and the modified partially-averaged Navier-Stokes (MPANS) model are applied in the present numerical analyses. It is indicated that the predicted results of the cavitation shedding dynamics by both turbulence models agree fairly well with the experimental data. It is also noted that the shedding frequency and the super cavity length predicted by the MPANS method are closer to the experiment data as compared to that predicted by the FBDCM model. The simulation results show that in the ventilated cavitation, the vapor cavity and the air cavity have the same shedding frequency. As the ventilated rate increases, the vapor cavity is depressed rapidly. The cavitation-vortex interaction in the ventilated cavitation is studied based on the vorticity transport equation (VTE) and the Lagrangian coherent structure (LCS). Those results demonstrate that the vortex dilatation and baroclinic torque terms are highly dependent on the evolution of the cavitation. In addition, from the LCSs and the tracer particles in the flow field, one may see the process from the attached cavity to the cloud cavity.