Numerical analysis of cavitating flow around a hemisphere-cylinder body

As the cavitating flow is multi-phase, gas and liquid phases coexist and show more complex nature than either single phase. Cavitation involves complex phase-change dynamics, and as a result, the inter-phase density is large. Due to the complex structure of the cavitation process, the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling of cavitation is still a challenge. In this paper, a new approach based on a preconditioning technique to simulation of two-phase cavitating flows around a hemisphere-cylinder body has been developed. In the proposed method, pressure, velocity, and enthalpy were used as the original variables, energy equation was used instead of cavitation model which normally has no physical meaning, and Roe discrete format was adopted for the convection term. The pressure coefficient distribution and void fraction obtained in this study are in very good agreement with the previously published experimental and numerical results at different cavitation numbers. Therefore, the newly developed method shows great potential for simulating various types of cavitation.