Numerical simulations of cavitation flow around a hydrofoil with consideration of thermal effects

Cavitation is one of the most important and common issues in hydraulic machines. Much attention has been paid on cavitation flow prediction, however, most of the current researches ignore the thermal effects during the cavitation process and have not taken into account the thermodynamic variation of phase change. In the presented paper, the cavitation flow characteristics around a hydrofoil NACA0015 was analyzed by numerical simulations and the results were compared with the experimental data from a reference paper. The focus was put on the cavitation process with respect to thermal effects. Steady and unsteady simulations were performed by ANSYS CFX 16.0 with a modified SST k-ω turbulence model under three different temperature conditions (25°C, 50°C, 70°C). The energy conservation equation was considered to describe the temperature field around the hydrofoil. To ensure the accuracy of simulations, the source term of thermal effects in vapor bubble transformation process was added into the evaporation and condensation functions of cavitation. The results indicated that simulations based on thermodynamic effects could detect the cavitation characteristics in detail and agree well with the experimental results.