A numerical investigation of unsteady bubbly cavitating nozzle flows

The effects of unsteady bubble dynamics on cavitating flow through a converging-diverging nozzle are investigated numerically. A continuum model that couples the Rayleigh-Plesset equation with the continuity and momentum equations is used to formulate unsteady, quasi-one-dimensional partial differential equations. Flow regimes studied include those where steady-state solutions exist, and those where steady-state solutions diverge at the so-called flashing instability. These latter flows consist of unsteady bubbly shock waves traveling downstream in the diverging section of the nozzle. An approximate analytical expression is developed to predict the critical backpressure for choked flow. The results agree with previous barotropic models for those flows where bubble dynamics are not important, but show that in many instances the neglect of bubble dynamics cannot be justified. Finally the computations show reasonable agreement with an experiment that measures the spatial variation of pressure, velocity and void fraction for steady shockfree flows, and good agreement with an experiment that measures the throat pressure and shock position for flows with bubbly shocks. In the model, damping of the bubble radial motion is restricted to a simple effective viscosity, but many features of the flow are shown to be independent of the specific damping mechanism. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.