Uncertainty Quantification of Turbulence Model Applied to a Cavitating Hydrofoil

Abstract

This paper presents the Global Sensitivity Analysis of the coefficients of the standard k-ε turbulence model used in RANS (Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes) simulations aimed to predict the flow around a bi-dimensional hydrofoil operating at non-cavitating and cavitating flow regimes. The sensitivity analysis is treated by the Sobol Decomposition, where the Sobol Indices are computed through the Polynomial Chaos Expansion of the 2-nd order with a Point-Collocation Non-Intrusive approach. From the current results, it seems that the considered cavitating flow regime is less sensitive to the variability of the input parameters, at least for the prediction of lift and drag.