(With link to paper) The prediction of cavitation is of large interest for the design of ship propellers. Cavitation influences the propeller efficiency and causes undesired phenomena such as noise, vibrations and erosion.
While potential flow solvers are routinely used for propeller design, viscous CFD calculations are used when a higher reliability is needed. Within a finite volume framework, the flow domain is subdivided into grid cells and the governing equations are solved numerically in every cell.
Finite Mass Transfer Effects
Marin has published a paper in which effects of the finite mass transfer rate with special focus on condensation are studied in detail. First, a cavity collapse will be considered to demonstrate how the finite transfer source term must be modified to satisfy the equilibrium flow assumption. Second, a single bubble collapse is studied numerically and effects of the finite mass transfer rate will be discussed. Part of this work is a comparison of cavitating flow dynamics predicted with a structured and an unstructured mesh.
The paper can be downloaded from the Marin-website.
