Comparison of the Homogeneous Relaxation Model and a Rayleigh Plesset Cavitation Model in Predicting the Cavitating Flow Through Various Injector Hole Shapes

Two cavitation models are evaluated based on their ability to reproduce the development of cavitation experimentally observed by Winklhofer et al. inside injector hole geometries. The first is Singhal's model, derived from a reduced form of the Rayleigh-Plesset equation, implemented in the commercial CFD package Fluent. The second is the homogeneous relaxation model, a continuum model that uses an empirical timescale to reproduce a range of vaporization mechanisms, implemented in the OpenFOAM framework. Previous work by Neroorkar et al. validated the homogeneous relaxation model for one of the nozzle geometries tested by Winklhofer et al. The present work extends that validation to all the three geometries considered by Winklhofer et al in order to compare the models' ability to capture the effects of nozzle convergence. As showed by the comparison between numerical and experimental data, both considered cavitation models well predict the effect of nozzle convergence on mass flow rate and the onset of cavitation and choking. However, they show lack of accuracy in reproducing vapor and flow velocity distributions. This may be due to condensation effects, assumptions regarding momentum transfer between phases, and the inadequacy of existing turbulence models for cavitating conditions. Copyright © 2013 SAE International.