Numerical evaluation of the bubble dynamic influence on the characteristics of multiscale cavitating flow in the bluff body wake

Unsteady cavitating flow around the bluff body widely existed in practical engineering fields. This paper aims to investigate the physics involved in the multi -scale cavitating flow in the wake of a wedge-shaped bluff body, with special emphasis on the bubble effects. Numerical simulation is conducted using the traditional Eulerian-Eulerian (E -E) and newly developed Eulerian-Lagrangian (E -L) methods in OpenFOAM. It is found that, compared with the experimental results, the E -L method can predict more accurate cavitation characteristics than the E -E method due to the contribution of discrete bubbles. Bubbles can significantly influence the behaviors of the multi -scale cavitating flow. Specially, analysis of pressure fluctuations indicates that the bubbles induce a stronger power spectral density in the middle- and high -frequency regions. With the bubble effects considered, the vortex structure is stretched and more extensive in the near wake regions. The strength of time -averaged vorticity distribution decreases in the far wake region. Further analysis of the vortex transport equation shows that bubble dynamics significantly increase the intensity of the stretching term by enhancing the spanwise velocity fluctuations. The intensity of the baroclinic torque term predicted by the E -L method is higher than that by the E -E method near the center line due to the influence of bubbles. On the other hand, the analysis of turbulent kinetic energy distribution indicates that bubbles can induce turbulence by increasing cross -stream velocity fluctuations. The increment of the shear Reynold stress, u ' x u ' y , suggests that the bubbles intensify the coupling between the streamwise and cross -stream velocity fluctuations.