Journal Article
Cavitating Flows in Hydraulic Multidimensional CFD Analysis
2008-10-07
2008-01-2678
The effect of cavitation plays a fundamental role in the hydraulic components design and the capability of predicting its causes and characteristics is fundamental for the optimization of fluid systems. In this paper, a multidimensional CFD approach is used to analyze the cavitating phenomena typical of hydraulic components using water as operating fluid. An open source fluid-dynamics code is used and the original cavitation model (based on a barotropic equation of state and homogeneous equilibrium assumption) is extended in order to account also for gases dissolved in the liquid medium. The effect of air dissolution into liquid water is modeled by introducing the Henry law for the equilibrium condition, and the time dependence of solubility is calculated on a Bunsen Coefficient basis. Furthermore, a simplified approach to turbulence modeling for compressible flows is coupled to the cavitation model and implemented into the CFD code.