This paper mainly summarizes the recent progresses for the cavitation study in the hydraulic machinery including turbo-pumps, hydro turbines, etc.. Especially, the newly developed numerical methods for simulating cavitating turbulent flows and the achievements with regard to the complicated flow features revealed by using advanced optical techniques as well as cavitation simulation are introduced so as to make a better understanding of the cavitating flow mechanism for hydraulic machinery. Since cavitation instabilities are also vital issue and rather harmful for the operation safety of hydro machines, we present the 1-D analysis method, which is identified to be very useful for engineering applications regarding the cavitating flows in inducers, turbine draft tubes, etc. Though both cavitation and hydraulic machinery are extensively discussed in literatures, one should be aware that a few problems still remains and are open for solution, such as the comprehensive understanding of cavitating turbulent flows especially inside hydro turbines, the unneglectable discrepancies between the numerical and experimental data, etc.. To further promote the study of cavitation in hydraulic machinery, some advanced topics such as a Density-Based solver suitable for highly compressible cavitating turbulent flows, a virtual cavitation tunnel, etc. are addressed for the future works.

A review of cavitation in hydraulic machinery

Large eddy simulation and Euler–Lagrangian coupling investigation of the transient cavitating turbulent flow around a twisted hydrofoil

In this paper, the turbulent attached cavitating flow around a Clark-Y hydrofoil is investigated by the large eddy simulation (LES) method coupled with a homogeneous cavitation model. The predicted lift coefficient and the cavity volume show a distinctly quasi-periodic process with cavitation shedding and the results agree fairly well with the available experimental data. The present simulation accurately captures the main features of the unsteady cavitation transient behavior including the attached cavity growth, the sheet/cloud cavitation transition and the cloud cavitation collapse. The vortex shedding structure from a hydrofoil cavitating wake is identified by the criterion, which implies that the large scale structures might slide and roll down along the suction side of the hydrofoil while being further developed at the downstream. Further analysis demonstrates that the turbulence level of the flow is clearly related to the cavitation and the turbulence velocity fluctuation is much influenced by the cavity shedding.

Large eddy simulation of turbulent attached cavitating flow with special emphasis on large scale structures of the hydrofoil wake and turbulence-cavitation interactions

In this paper, we investigate the verification and validation (V&V) procedures for the URANS simulations of the turbulent cavitating flow around a Clark-Y hydrofoil. The main focus is on the feasibility of various Richardson extrapolation-based uncertainty estimators in the cavitating flow simulation. The unsteady cavitating flow is simulated by a density corrected model (DCM) coupled with the Zwart cavitation model. The estimated uncertainty is used to evaluate the applicability of various uncertainty estimation methods for the cavitating flow simulation. It is shown that the preferred uncertainty estimators include the modified Factor of Safety (FS1), the Factor of Safety (FS) and the Grid Convergence Index (GCI). The distribution of the area without achieving the validation at the Vv level shows a strong relationship with the cavitation. Further analysis indicates that the predicted velocity distributions, the transient cavitation patterns and the effects of the vortex stretching are highly influenced by the mesh resolution.

Verification and validation of URANS simulations of the turbulent cavitating flow around the hydrofoil

A new Euler-Lagrangian cavitation model for tip-vortex cavitation with the effect of non-condensable gas

Combined experimental observation and numerical simulation of the cloud cavitation with U-type flow structures on hydrofoils

In this paper, recent measurements of tip vortex flow with and without cavitation carried out in Cavitation Mechanism Tunnel of China Ship Scientific Research Center (CSSRC) are presented. The elliptic hydrofoil with section NACA 662-415 was adopted as test model. High-speed video (HSV) camera was used to visualize the trajectory of tip vortex core and the form of tip vortex cavitation (TVC) in different cavitation situations. Laser Doppler velocimetry (LDV) was employed to measure the tip vortex flow field in some typical sections along the vortex trajectory with the case of cavitation free. Stereo particle image velocimetry (SPIV) system was used to measure the velocity and vorticity distributions with and without cavitation. Series measurement results such as velocity and vorticity distributions, the trajectory of tip vortex core, the vortex core radius, cavity size and cavitation inception number were obtained. The results demonstrated that the minimum pressure coefficient in the vortex core obtained by flow field measurement was quite coincident with the tip vortex cavitation inception number obtained under the condition of high incoming velocity and low air content. And TVC would decrease the vortex strength comparing with the case without cavitation.

Experimental measurement of tip vortex flow field with/without cavitation in an elliptic hydrofoil

An acoustic approach to determine tip vortex cavitation inception for an elliptical hydrofoil considering nuclei-seeding

Tip vortex cavitation (TVC) is an important cavitation phenomenon in marine propeller. The formation and evolution of tip vortex cavitation are hot topics consistently both in engineering application and mechanism research. In this paper some recent studies on tip vortex cavitation inception and the noise of tip vortex cavitation evolution are presented. The effects of both flow field and water qualities on tip vortex cavitation inception are considered by experiments and numerical simulations. The results show that besides the average minimum pressure in the vortex core the turbulence fluctuation and water qualities including air content and nuclei distribution have great influence on tip vortex cavitation inception. Based on the idea of first nucleus cavitating in tip vortex core new prediction formula for tip vortex cavitation inception is proposed. The synchronous technique of high speed video observation and noise measurement are adopted to study the development of tip vortex cavitation. S-type total noise characteristics are obtained when cavitation number from low to high. Vortex singing is found in the case where the tip vortex cavitation just before leaves the tip region. The excited mechanism of vortex singing is proposed by analyzing the wave propagation on the interface of vortex cavity.

Lianghao Xu

Papers

Combined experimental observation and numerical simulation of the cloud cavitation with U-type flow structures on hydrofoils

Experimental measurement of tip vortex flow field with/without cavitation in an elliptic hydrofoil

An acoustic approach to determine tip vortex cavitation inception for an elliptical hydrofoil considering nuclei-seeding

Study of tip vortex cavitation inception and vortex singing

Probing and Imaging of Vapor-Water Mixture Properties Inside Partial/Cloud Cavitating Flows