Real industrial examples have been used to evaluate the viability of several cavitation erosion risk indicators (ERIs). Industry standard endurance tests resulted in non-critical cavitation erosion of a shoe and shoe-guide assembly in a high-pressure fuel pump. A design modification was made which eliminated the erosion. Transient CFD simulations of the two designs were run. The distribution and intensity of the resulting ERIs were evaluated against photographic evidence of erosion taken after endurance testing. Details of the component dynamics and the resulting cavitation formation and collapse are presented, along with an analysis of the ERIs for their potential usefulness. Of the 11 ERIs studied, two were found to be particularly good indicators, one of which is newly derived for this research. It is now anticipated that using these ERIs to guide product design and development will save considerable time and cost.

Cavitating flow dynamics are investigated in an axisymmetric converging-diverging Venturi nozzle. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) results are compared with those from previous experiments. New analysis performed on the quantitative results from both datasets reveals a coherent trend and shows that the simulations and experiments agree well. The CFD results have confirmed the interpretation of the high-speed images of the Venturi flow, which indicated that there are two vapor shedding mechanisms that exist under different running conditions: re-entrant jet and condensation shock. Moreover, they provide further details of the flow mechanisms that cannot be extracted from the experiments. For the first time with this cavitating Venturi nozzle, the re-entrant jet shedding mechanism is reliably achieved in CFD simulations. The condensation shock shedding mechanism is also confirmed, and details of the process are presented. These CFD results compare well with the experimental shadowgraphs, space-time plots, and time-averaged reconstructed computed tomography slices of vapor fraction.

A CFD investigation is in progress to study the cavitation characteristics and potential erosion risks of a control orifice in a prototype injector. An early design of the orifice resulted in cavitation erosion after endurance testing. A design modification eliminated the erosion and subsequent prototypes were free from damage. Initial results for the two designs using different simulation methods are discussed, along with the effects of different rates of evaporating and condensing mass transfer. Preliminary findings on possible erosion risk indicators comparing the eroding with the non-eroding design are presented.