Numerical prediction of erosion due to a cavitating jet

TL;DR

This paper uses high-resolution simulations to assess erosion caused by cavitating jets, comparing different cavitation intensities and methods to estimate erosion potential, validated against experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive numerical approach with new pit equivalent generation methods to evaluate cavitation erosion potential.

Findings

Different cavitation intensities significantly affect erosion potential.

The new pit equivalent method correlates well with experimental data.

Grid resolution impacts the accuracy of erosion predictions.

Abstract

We numerically investigate the erosion potential of a cavitating liquid jet by means of high-resolution finite volume simulations. As thermodynamic model, we employ a barotropic equilibrium cavitation approach, embedded into a homogeneous mixture model. To resolve the effects of collapsing vapor structures and to estimate the erosion potential, full compressibility is considered. Two different operating points featuring different cavitation intensities are investigated and their erosion potential is estimated and compared. Different methods are used for this purpose, including collapse detection (Mihatsch et al., 2015), maximum pressure distribution on the wall, and a new method of generating numerical pit equivalents. The data of numerical pit equivalents is analyzed in detail and compared with experimental data from the literature. Furthermore, a comprehensive grid study for both operating points is presented.