Numerical investigation of cavitation vortex dynamics in different cavitation patterns coupled implicit large eddy simulation and boundary data immersion method

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to investigate the flow characteristics of different cavitation flow patterns around a NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) 66 hydrofoil by applying the BDIM (boundary data immersion method) and ILES (implicit large eddy simulation) with an artificial code. Meanwhile, an artificial compressibility method is also employed to consider the effects of compressibility on cavitating flow. The results present that the numerical method can effectively capture different cavitation patterns, which agrees well with the previous experimental data. Subsequently, the detailed analysis of vortex structures and dynamics for the non-cavitation (σ = 3.0), sheet cavitation (σ = 2.0), and cloud cavitation (σ = 1.6) cases with the Liutex method and the vortex enstrophy transport equation have been investigated. When cavitation occurs, the degree of turbulence and the enstrophy in the flow field have been enhanced, due to the disturbance of the velocity field. For sheet cavitation, complex vortex structures appear in the attached cavity region with high-intensity enstrophy causing by the highly intense velocity and density gradient. As the cavitation pattern transits from the sheet cavitation to the cloud cavitation, more complex vortex structures can be observed in the cavitation region. Furthermore, the value and the fluctuation amplitude of enstrophy intensity increase significantly under the effect of reentrant jet. Analysis of the enstrophy transport equation indicates that the vortex stretching term and dilatation term for cloud cavitation increase relatively significantly with the movement of the reentrant flow and are highly dependent on the cavitation evolution. In addition, the region affected by the baroclinic torque also increases.