Validation of a three-phase Eulerian CFD model to account for cavitation and spray atomization phenomena

Abstract

Cavitation phase change phenomenon appears in many engineering applications, often eroding and damaging surfaces, so deteriorating the performance of devices. Therefore, it is a phenomenon of great interest for the research and industry communities. In this work, three different cavitation models, the Homogeneous Relaxation Model (HRM), the Schnerr and Sauer, and the Kunz, are implemented in a Eulerian multiphase homogeneous flow Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) solver previously developed for simulating fully atomized sprays. The improved solver can be used then to study not only cases with cavitation, such a hydrofoil, but also situations where cavitation occurs together with liquid atomization, such as high pressure injection systems. Validation of this solver is carried out for three different cases under diverse operating conditions: a two-dimmensional throttle, a hydrofoil and a single-hole fuel injector. The Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach is employed for taking into account the turbulence effects. Simulation results are compared to experimental data available in the literature. Among the tested cavitation models, the HRM is the one that provides the best accuracy in the three validation cases. Nevertheless, the onset of cavitation and the area occupied by the vapor cavities are always underpredicted, by all cavitation models in all validation cases. This can be associated to the unsteady and turbulent nature of the cavitation phenomenon. Even so, the computational prediction of several parameters, such as mass flow rate through the nozzles or spray spreading angle, has an error below 5-10%, which proves the capabilities of the solver.