Investigation of effects of supercavitation on flow

Abstract

Despite the negative effects of cavitation, there are also ways of harnessing the effects of cavitation to reduce the amount of drag and this phenomenon is known as “supercavitation”. This study aims to model and investigate the effects of supercavitation on flow. In this study, 15 simulation cases will be done, and the results of the simulation will be validated against the results from past research papers. ANSYS FLUENT will be used to simulate the numerical models and the turbulence model used in this study is the “Standard k-𝜀” turbulence model with multiphase mixture model which are compatible with the pressure solver. The cavity length, vapor volume fraction, velocity, and pressure coefficient are the important properties that are extracted from the simulation results. The simulation results obtained in this study are in good agreement with the past research papers. The disagreement of the data only occurred at 60° cavitator. The results also show the difference between the contours obtained in this project and past research papers which is possibly due to the difference in computing solver type used. Lastly, the results obtained in this project also show that the drag coefficient is affected by the cavitation condition and cavitator angles. The drag coefficient obtained in the cavitation condition were decreased by 43.1% to 52.2%, as compared to the simulation without cavitation condition. The results also show that 30° cavitator has the highest drag coefficient decrease of 52.2%.