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

TLDR: In this paper, the authors investigated the feasibility of various Richardson extrapolation-based uncertainty estimators in the cavitating flow simulation, including the modified Factor of Safety (FS1), the Factor of safety (FS), and the Grid Convergence Index (GCI).

Abstract: 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.