Numerical investigation of turbulence characteristics in cavitating flows using BDIM and ILES method: Insights into vortex dynamics and turbulent kinetic energy

Abstract

The present study investigates turbulence characteristics in cavitating flows around Clark-y hydrofoil by applying the BDIM (boundary data immersion method) and ILES (implicit large eddy simulation) with our in-house code. The numerical results exhibit a satisfactory consistency with the experimental data. Through analysis of the growth of the re-entrant jet and large-scale shedding of the cavity, the turbulent structures in cavitating flows are discussed in detail. Subsequently, the vortex structure at different energy levels in turbulence are identified by the Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) method, so as to extract the large-scale coherent structure in the turbulent flow field. Further analysis of turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) reveals that the instability of flow field and turbulence pulsation intensity increase under the effect of re-entrant jet and large-scale shedding of the cavity. Furthermore, the fluctuating turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) and root mean square value of fluctuating velocities at five different cross-sections become more significant, causing by the strong interactions between liquid and vapor.