Experimental and Numerical Study of Cavitation Number Limitations for Hydrodynamic Cavitation Inception Prediction

Abstract

Hydrodynamic cavitation is the formation, growth and subsequent collapse of vapor bubbles in a moving liquid. It is extremely important to determine conditions of cavitation inception and when it starts damaging industrial equipment. In some cases, such as hydrodynamic cleaning it is important to understand how to improve the cavitation phenomenon in order to enhance cleaning properties. The cavitation number is a parameter used to predict cavitation and its potential effects. In this paper we discuss limitations of this parameter and demonstrate that it cannot be considered sufficient to predict cavitation inception and development in the fluid flow. The experimental setup was designed and built to study cavitation inception in various nozzles. RANS SST k–ω turbulence model was used in this study to model turbulent flow in ANSYS Fluent. CFD calculations were compared to experimental results. It was shown that cavitation inception was sensitive to change in nozzle geometry and, since geometrical parameters are not included in cavitation number formula, scenarios of cavitation inception can be different at the same cavitation number.

Current State of Research on the Mechanism of Cavitation Effects in the Treatment of Liquid Petroleum Products—Review and Proposals for Further Research

“…It was also shown in this work that the temperature dependence of cavitation is different for each tube geometry. In general, the conclusions of the experimental study [42] only confirm the impossibility of using the cavitation number as the only parameter for predicting the occurrence of cavitation.…”

“…Numerical analysis of cavitation was performed using the most common model of Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes equations in the Ansys Fluent software package. The main drawback of existing expressions for determining the cavitation number is the lack of consideration of the reactor working chamber geometry, which was demonstrated in this work [42], where there was no pattern of change in the cavitation number when changing the geometry of the tubes under study. At the same time, cavitation was observed both at a cavitation number equal to 1 and at a cavitation number equal to 5.…”

“…In work [42], an estimated comparison of the numerical prediction of cavitation numbers with the results of experimental investigations was carried out. Numerical analysis of cavitation was performed using the most common model of Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes equations in the Ansys Fluent software package.…”

Phenol degradation using combined effects of hydrodynamic cavitation and oxidant: Doehlert matrix

“…The cavitation number (C V ) was adopted in the present work to understand the intensity of cavitation (Omelyanyuk et al., 2022) and to explore the suitable conditions for the application of HC. The cavitation number was calculated using Equation (1), based on flow rate conditions in the main line.…”

Simulation Study of Hydrodynamic Cavitation in the Orifice Flow

“…The value of the cavitation number corresponding to the first occurrence of cavitation at a given inlet pressure is referred to as the cavitation inception number (Brennen, 1994). Cavitation initiation is sensitive to nozzle geometry changes (Omelyanyuk, 2022). As noted, geometric parameters are not included in the cavitation number formula so cavitation initiation can occur differently with the same cavitation number.…”