Application of Multiphase CFD Modeling to Naval Design in Presence of Cavitation

In the design process of a wide variety of fluid machinery, as the naval profiles under investigations, the occurrence of cavitation is one of the most important aspects that need to be considered. Cavitation of marine propellers can cause many problems, such as vibration, noise, and erosion on the blades. Marine propeller researchers and designers have made numerous efforts to reduce the effects of cavitation. However, with recent high-speed and shallow-draft ships, it is difficult to avoid cavitation without compromising the propeller efficiency. Different efforts have been given in literature to simulate cavitating flows with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods. However, validation of computational results with experimental data is very fragmentary in many papers. The main cause is the lack of experimental data. This means that at present, uncertainty exists on the adequacy of the physical models applied to describe the cavitation dynamics. Therefore, the aim of this work is the investigation of currently known cavitation models and the implementation of these models in a commercial CFD code. Final validation results are presented for flows over hydrofoils. For each case, experimental data are compared. In general, the results are very promising. Several aspects of cavitation phenomena, of fundamental importance for the profiles design, can be accurately captured with the developed cavitation models.