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A simple cavitation model for unsteady simulation and its application to cavitating flow in twodimensional convergent-divergent nozzle

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2015 IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng. 72 022009
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International Symposium of Cavitation and Multiphase Flow (ISCM 2014)

IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 72 (2015) 022009
doi:10.1088/1757-899X/72/2/022009

A simple cavitation model for unsteady simulation and its

application to cavitating flow in two-dimensional convergentdivergent nozzle
Y Yamamoto1, S Watanabe2 and S I Tsuda2
Graduate School of Engineering, Kyushu University, 744 Motooka, Nishi-ku,
Fukuoka, Fukuoka 819-0395, Japan
2
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kyushu University, 744 Motooka, Nishi-ku,
Fukuoka, Fukuoka 819-0395, Japan

E-mail: fmnabe@mech.kyushu-u.ac.jp
Abstract. In this paper, a simple cavitation model is developed under the framework of
homogeneousone-fluid model, in which the perfect mixture of liquid and vapor phases is
assumed. In most of conventional models, the vapor phase is considered as a dispersed phase
against the liquid phase as a continuous phase, while in the present model, two extreme
conditions are considered: for low void fraction, dispersed vapor bubbles in continuous liquid
phase, while for high void fraction, dispersed droplets in continuous vapor phase. The growth
of bubbles and droplets are taken into account in the mass transfer between vapor and liquid
phases, and are switched according to the local void fraction. The model is applied for the
simulation of cavitating flow in a two-dimensional convergent-divergent nozzle, and the result
is compared with that using a conventional model. To enhance the unsteadiness of cavitation
due to the instability at the cavity interphase, the turbulent shear stress is modified depending
upon the continuous phases in combination with the proposed cavitation model, which
drastically reduces the turbulent viscosity for high void fraction region. As a result, the
unsteadiness of cavitation observed in experiments is well reproduced.

1. Introduction
The recent rapid progress of computer science has enabled us to simulate the cavitating flow and
achieve qualitative, and in some extent, quantitative agreements with actual observed flows. However,
such cavitation CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) still often fails to predict the cavitation
performance even in simple cases of cavitating hydrofoil (Kato [1]). Moreover, still due to the limited
computer resources, Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulation is often used to simulate
the unsteady cavitating flow. However, the reproduction of the unsteadiness of cavitation is very
limited, and key unsteady cavitation phenomena such as a re-entrant jet which develops beneath the
sheet cavity and the formation of cloud cavity can never be simulated with RANS model developed
based on incompressible flow. On the other hands, Reboud et al. [2]considered that the incompressible
turbulence model overestimates the turbulent viscosity in the two-phase region, and has proposed the
well-known Reboud correction to cut the turbulence viscosity in most of two phase flow region. With
the tuned parameter, this correction method has successfully reproduced the major unsteadiness of
cavitation in cases of a two-dimensional convergent-divergent nozzle [2], a two-dimensional hydrofoil
[3], and a three-dimensional twisted hydrofoil [4].
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1

International Symposium of Cavitation and Multiphase Flow (ISCM 2014)

IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 72 (2015) 022009
doi:10.1088/1757-899X/72/2/022009

The cavitating flows in two-dimensional convergent-divergent nozzles have been studied by many
researchers, because of their simple structures but revealing important unsteady natures of cavitating
flow such as re-entrant jet evolutions and vertical cloud cavity shedding. Stutz and Reboud [5], [6]
have measured, by using a double optical probe, two-phase structures inside the cavity on the throat
section of convergent divergent nozzle. Their nozzles have a common convergent angle of 43but two
different diverging angles of 4and 8. Keil et al. [7] have studied an aggressiveness of collapse of
cloud cavitation in this kind of nozzle for the wide variety of Reynolds number. In our previous study
[8], we investigated the unsteady character of cavitation in two-dimensional convergent-divergent
nozzles with divergent angles of 4.0 and 8.4. In both nozzles, we could not observe the re-entrant jet
nor large scale cloud cavities, probably due to low Reynolds number flow compared to the other
studies, while we observed small cloud cavity shedding from the trailing edge of sheet cavity as an
essential character of cavitating flow in this kind of nozzle.
In the present study, we propose a simple cavitation model which considers virtually the interface
between liquid and vapour phases in the framework of homogeneous one-fluid model, in which a
subgrid-scale model of bubbles in the liquid phase and that of droplets in the vapour phase are
employed. Mass source terms of liquid/vapour phases are considered through the growths and
collapses of bubbles and droplets which are locally switched depending upon the local void fraction.
In conjunction with this treatment of continuum phase, we also switch the eddy viscosity as well as the
molecular viscosity depending upon whether the continuum phase is vapour or liquid. By doing so, it
is expected to reproduce the strong unsteadiness of cavitating flow such as the generations of cloud
cavities from the trailing edge of sheet cavity even ifincompressibletwo-equation RANS turbulence
model is employed.In this paper, the proposed model is applied for the simulation of cavitating flow in
a simple two-dimensional convergent-divergent nozzle. The effects of the choices of the mass source
terms for bubbles and droplets as well as the turbulence model modification on the global motion of
unsteady cavitating flow are investigated.
2. Numerical method
A numerical simulation was carried out byusing an opensource software, OpenFOAM. Several
cavitation models are implemented in OpenFOAM, among which we employ interPhaseChangeFoam
(IPCF) as a base solver. This solver is an incompressible Navier-Stokes one with homogeneous
cavitation model considering the phase change between liquid and vapour phases.Besides the
momentum equation of the mixture and the transport equations of turbulence properties, IPCF solves
the following continuity equation and the mass conservation of liquid phase as follows
u j

1
1
m m
x j l v

(1)

l u j 1 m m
t x j
l

(2)

where isa Cartesian coordinate, is velocity componentin the direction, and are densities of
liquid and vapour phases, is a volume fraction of liquid phase. The source terms in the above
equations, and , are mass transfer rates between two phases due to evaporation and condensation,
which are modelled in the following section.
2.1. Cavitation model
2.1.1. Schnerr-Sauer model (SS). Schnerr-Sauer (SS) model [9] implemented in OpenFOAM-2.2.1 is
employed as a base model for this study, which has been used in many studies(for recent examples,
[10] and [11]).In SS model, the vapour bubbles are always considered as dispersed phase in continuum

International Symposium of Cavitation and Multiphase Flow (ISCM 2014)

IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 72 (2015) 022009
doi:10.1088/1757-899X/72/2/022009

liquid phase even for very large void fraction region. The SS model is based on the Rayleigh equation
as follows
d 2 R 3 dR
p pv


2
l
dt
2 dt
2

(3)

where is a bubble radius, is pressure,

is saturation pressure. If we neglect the second
derivativeterm, the bubble radius growth can be represented by the following equation.
dR
2 p pv
sign pv p
dt
3 l

In this model, the void fraction

the bubble radius is derived from

(4)

represents the vapour volume per unit mixture volume and

as follows.
4 3
R
3
v
4 3
1 nnuc
R
3
nnuc

(5)

v
3

4
nnuc 1 v
3

(6)

where
is the number of bubbles per unit liquid volume.From those equations, the mass source
terms of SS model can be obtained as
m Cc

v l
3 2 p pv
v 1( v )
? p pv

R 3 l

(7)

v l
3 2 pv p
v 1( v )
? p pv

R 3 l

(8)

m Ce

where Cc and Ce are condensation and evaporation coefficients and l 1 v vv is the

mixture density.In the present study, the basic parameters in this model are set as
and
.
2.1.2. Bubble-Droplet1 model (BD1). Since applying the dispersed bubble models for large void
fraction regions seems to be inappropriate, we consider another extreme case in which vapour phase
contains more or less liquid droplets. In this study, this extreme condition near the void fraction is
unity is taken into account in our model, at which we treat vapour phase as a continuum media. Figure
1 shows the conceptual drawing of our model.
This model virtually considers the interface between liquid and vapour phases as the iso-surface of
, and in this study
is set to be 0.5 for simplicity. When the local void fraction
void fraction
, the vapour phase is treated as dispersed phase, while
, the liquid
satisfies
phase is treated as dispersed phase. The mass transfer between vapour and liquid are dominated by
that occurs at the surfaces of the bubbles/droplets, then the mass transfer rates
and
are
switched depending upon the local void fraction . In the model Bubble-Droplet 1(BD1), the SS
model, i.e. equation (7) and (8), is adopted for
, while for
the phase change at
the surface of droplet is considered using Schrages mass flux [12], expressed as follows

International Symposium of Cavitation and Multiphase Flow (ISCM 2014)

IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 72 (2015) 022009
doi:10.1088/1757-899X/72/2/022009

k
pv p
2 Rg T

(9)

where is a evaporate/condensate coefficient, is a gas constant, and is temperature. The value of k

was set to 0.4 throughout this computation. By considering the phase change through the total surface
area of droplets, the mass transfer rate can be obtained as
m m m

where

3 1 v
k
pv p
Rd
2 Rg T

(10)

is a radius of droplet, which can be calculated by

Rd

l
3

4
nnuc 1 l
3

1 v
4
nnuc v
3

(11)

Since we do not consider any collisions and fissions of droplets/bubbles and any nucleation and
is constant and common for bubbles and droplets.
destructions,
Since the cavity interface can be virtually treated, the mass transfer at the cavity interface is
supposed to be possibly treated, which remains for our future study.

Figure 1. Conceptual drawing of bubble drop model

2.1.3. Bubble-Droplet2 model (BD2) Schrages mass flux can also be applied for the bubbly flow
region. In the model Bubble-Droplet 2 (BD2), the following mass transfer rate derived from the
phase change through the bubble surfaces is applied for the region with
instead of equation
(7) and (8) in SS model.
m m m

k
3 v
pv p
2 Rg T R

(12)

2.1.4.Bubble-Droplet1 viscosity filtering model(BD1VF). Throughout the present computations, the

standard k- model was used. However, it is known that key unsteady cavitation phenomena such as a
re-entrant jet which develops beneath the sheet cavity and the formation of cloud cavity can never be
simulated with incompressible RANS turbulence model.To enhance the unsteadiness due to the
instability on the sheet cavity interface, we switch the eddy viscosity as well as the molecular
viscosityby referring only the continuum phase. This treatment may look similar to well-known
Reboud correction [2], while in this study the turbulent and molecular viscositiesare modified based

International Symposium of Cavitation and Multiphase Flow (ISCM 2014)

IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 72 (2015) 022009
doi:10.1088/1757-899X/72/2/022009

on the fluid properties of continuum phase only, which is suitably applied in combination with BD1
model.
2.2. Computational method
Numerical simulations using above models were carried out for the unsteady cavitating flow in a twodimensional convergent-divergent nozzle shownin Figure 2. The height of throat h is 5mm. The nozzle
consists of a top straight wall and a bottom inclined wall with convergent and divergent angles of 43
and 8.4 degrees, respectively. This nozzle shape is similar to that used in our previous experiment [8],
in which we observe a continuous cloud cavity shedding from the trailing edge of the sheet cavity.
As the boundary conditions, the velocity is fixed at the inlet (
), and the static
pressure is fixed at the outlet. The non-slip flow condition is applied on the upper and lower wall of
the nozzle. The number of nodes is1,200 (along the wall) x 60 (perpendicular to the wall). For the
convection scheme, second order upwind scheme is basically used except the void fraction; for the
convection scheme in equation (2), TVD scheme [13] is used to well capture the cavity interface. As
for the time integration, implicit Euler scheme is employed with the variable small time step satisfying
local CFL number less than 0.8.

Figure 2. Computational domain (main flow direction is from left to right)

3. Result and discussion
Figure 3 shows typical cavity shapes at four instants with the time interval of 4ms, simulated by using
four models described before. The cavitation number defined using the area-averaged nozzle throat
velocity
as
takes similar value of 1.63in all cases except SS
model (0.49), resulting in the time averaged cavity length of
. The similar cavitation
observed in the previous experiment [8] is also shown in figure3 (a). By comparing the results
between SS, BD1 and BD2 models, it is found that the sheet cavity is slightly longer for BD1 and BD2,
but the unsteady behavior of cavitation is very similar: there are no cloud cavities observed but the
sheet cavity slightly fluctuates. However, by applying the viscosity filtering model along with BD1
(BD1VF), we can clearly see the cloud cavity shedding similar to that observed in the experiment.
These results suggest that the treatment of the turbulent shear stress is important rather than the
cavitation model, whereas the concept of the viscosity filtering treatment in this study is conceptually
suitable to the proposed cavitation model BD1 and BD2.
Figure 4(a) shows the results of the FFT analysis of pressure fluctuation measured23h downstream
on the upper wall in the case with
. In this figure, the strong peak around 40Hz (60Hz
in SS model) and its harmonics can be clearly seen for SS, BD1 and BD2. This is associated with the
cavity volume change observed in figure. 3(b)-(d), which numericallycauses surge-like oscillation of
liquid column downstream of the sheet cavity. For the BD1VF model, the every frequency component
is significantly larger than those for SS, BD1 and BD2, but we can clearly see the broad-banded
frequency peaks around 45Hz, which is caused by the continuous cloud cavity shedding from the
trailing edge of the sheet cavity. Similar tendency could be found for the other conditions with various
sheet cavity lengths.
Figure 4 (b) shows the comparisons of Strouhal number
of the cloud cavity
shedding predicted by BD1VF model with that obtained by the experiment. Although the numerical

International Symposium of Cavitation and Multiphase Flow (ISCM 2014)

IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 72 (2015) 022009
doi:10.1088/1757-899X/72/2/022009

data are limited to longer sheet cavities, the tendency of the predicted Strouhal number against the
cavity length is very similar to the experiment. Therefore, we believe that the present model can well
simulate the unsteadiness of the cloud cavity shedding in this kind of nozzle flow.

Amplitude of pressure coefficient [-]

(d) BD2(Lc/h=15.7, =1.64)

(b) SS (Lc/h=11.3, =0.49)

(c) BD1(Lc/h=14.4, =1.62)

(e) BD1VF (Lc/h=11.5, =1.63)

Figure 3.
Comparisons of
cavity behaviours among four
numerical
models
and
experiment

Strouhal number, St=fh/Uthroat

(a) Experiment [8] (=1.14)

100
SS
BD1
BD2
BD1VF

80
60
40
20
0
0

100

200
300
Frequency [Hz]

400

500

(a) Typical FFT results withLc/h =11-16

0.5
0.4

Experiment
BD1VF

0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0

5
10
Normalized cavity length Lc/h

(b) Strouhal number of cloud cavity shedding

Figure 4. Results of FFT analysis of pressure fluctuation caused by unsteady cavitation

4. Concluding remarks
In this paper, a simple cavitation model was developed under the framework of homogeneous onefluid model. The model is constructed consideringtwo extreme conditions; for low void fraction,
dispersed vapour bubbles in continuous liquid phase, while for high void fraction, dispersed droplets
in continuous vapour phase, and according to the local void fraction, the growth of bubbles and
droplets are taken into account in the mass transfer between vapour and liquid phases. To enhance the
unsteadiness of cavitation due to the instability at the cavity interphase, the turbulent shear stress is
modified depending upon the continuous phases in combination with the proposed cavitation model. It
is found that the proposed model can well predict the major unsteadiness of cavitation, i.e. continuous
cloud cavity shedding from the sheet cavity, in a two-dimensional convergent-divergent nozzle flow.

International Symposium of Cavitation and Multiphase Flow (ISCM 2014)

IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 72 (2015) 022009
doi:10.1088/1757-899X/72/2/022009

References
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24-29, July,2011) AJK2011-06084
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7-10, April, 1998) 203-208
[3] Coutier-Delgosha O, Fortes-Patella R and Reboud J L 2003 ASME J. Fluids Eng. 125 38-45
[4] Ji B, Luo X W, Arndt R E A and Wu Y L 2014 Ocean Eng. 87 64-77
[5] Stutz B and Reboud J L 1997 Physics of Fluids 9 3678-86
[6] Stutz B and Reboud J L 2000 Experiments in Fluids 29 545-52
[7] Keil T, Pelz P F, Cordes U and Ludwig G 2011 Proc. WIMRC 3rd International Cavitation
Forum 2011(Warwick, UK, 4 6 July 2011)
[8] Watanabe S, Enomoto K, Hara Y and Furukawa A 2012 Proc. 5th Int. Symp. on Fluid
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[9] Schnerr G and Sauer J 2001 Proc. 4th International Conference on Multiphase Flow (New
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[10] Young Y L and Savander B R 2011 Ocean Engineering 38 1368-81
[11] Roohi E, Zahiri A P, and Passandideh-Fard M 2013 Applied Mathematical Modelling 37 646988
[12] Schrage R W 1953 Theoretical Study of Interphase Mass Transfer (Columbia: Columbia
University Press)
[13] Bram V L 1974 J. of Computational Physics 14 361-70