Numerical research on unsteady cavitating flow over a hydrofoil

Abstract

Cavitation is a widely known phenomenon in pumps and water turbines installations. It can lead to significant damage of blades and walls of the rotor therefore it is crucial during pump designing and exploitation to avoid working in flow conditions, that enabled cavitation to occur. Nowadays numerical simulations of flow can provide valuable information concerning pressure and velocity distribution and can indicate if there is a risk of cavitating flow appearance. There are a few mathematical models which describe cavitating flow. In the paper Schnerr & Sauer model was chosen for simulation. Aim of the paper is to verify its utility in case of different cavitating flow regimes over Clark-Y hydrofoil. After performing the grid independence study four different cavitation regimes were investigated. The vapour areas appearance, their shapes and changes in time were observed. The assumption of isothermal, two - phase flow was made. The calculations were performed using OpenFOAM and were compared to the available measurements data. The presented results concerned sheet and cloud cavitation regimes.