Numerical evaluation of cavitation shedding structure around 3D Hydrofoil: Comparison of PANS, LES and RANS results with experiments

Abstract

Results of cavitating turbulent flow simulation around a twisted hydrofoil were presented in the paper using the Partially-Averaged Navier-Stokes (PANS) method (Ji et al. 2013a), Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) (Ji et al. 2013b) and Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS). The results are compared with available experimental data (Foeth 2008). The PANS and LES reasonably reproduce the cavitation shedding patterns around the twisted hydrofoil with primary and secondary shedding, while the RANS model fails to simulate the unsteady cavitation shedding phenomenon and yields an almost steady flow with a constant cavity shape and vapor volume. Besides, it is noted that the predicted shedding vapor cavity by PANS is more turbulent and the shedding vortex is stronger than that by LES, which is more consistent with experimental photos.