Numerical investigation of non-isothermal cavitating flows on hydrofoils by means of an extended schnerr-sauer model coupled with a nucleation model

The present work aims to investigate cavitating flows of water, liquid hydrogen and nitrogen on hydrofoils numerically, using the open source code OpenFOAM. The Eulerian homogeneous mixture approach has been used, consisting in a mass transfer model which is based on the combination of a two-phase incompressible unsteady solver with a Volume of Fluid (VOF) interface tracking method. Thermal effects have been introduced by means of the activation of energy equation and latent heat source terms plus convective heat source term. The dependency of the saturation conditions to the temperature has been defined using Antoine-like equations. An extended Schnerr-Sauer model based on the Classical Nucleation Theory (CNT) has been implemented for the computation of the interfacial mass transfer rates. In order to investigate the nucleation effects, an extension of the Classical Nucleation Theory has been considered by coupling the Population Balance Equation/Extended Quadrature-Based Method of Moments (PBE-EQBMM) with the CFD model, which has been defined in combination with a transport equation for the nuclei density. Results showed that nucleation determined a non-uniform field of nuclei density so as to produce a reduction of the temperature drop inside the vapor bubbles, as well as a warmed wake downstream the vapor cavity. Unsteady computations also revealed an influence of the nucleation on the dynamics of the vapor cavity and the bubble detachment.