Numerical Investigation of Cavitation Effect on the Performance of Waterjet Propulsion System by Computational Fluid Dynamics

The numerical simulation of cavitation phenomenon in waterjet propulsion system, due to destructive effects and complicated and two-phase nature, is one of the greatest challenges in engineering and numerical modeling. Due to needing of very much cost for experimental studying this phenomenon in the cavitation tunnel, in this paper, the happening of cavitation in axial flow waterjet was simulated by computational fluid dynamics. The head, torque, and thrust due to cavitation and ignoring that were calculated in 3 flow rate values. The result showed good agreement with experimental data. One of the new studies in this paper is the investigation of the pattern of cavitation bulb forming on the tip and suction side of the rotor’s blade. Numerical simulation was performed, using the rotor and stator and with rotor only. Numerical solution is performed, using a the structured grid, the rotating reference frame, the periodic domain, and SST turbulence model in the steady form.