Question
Is it possible to calculate cavitation effects in Flownex during a water hammer simulation? For example, can Flownex determine whether cavitation occurs and calculate detailed results such as the mass of the gas phase generated by cavitation?
Answer
Flownex can provide an indication of when cavitation occurs during a water hammer simulation when using a pure fluid model. This allows users to identify conditions where pressures drop sufficiently to trigger cavitation phenomena.
However, Flownex does not currently provide detailed cavitation results, such as the mass of the gas or vapor phase generated during the cavitation process. While it is possible to model two-phase fluids in Flownex, accurately simulating cavitation effects in this manner would require extremely small time steps because the current equilibrium-based phase change approach assumes that phase changes occur instantaneously. This makes detailed cavitation modelling impractical for most applications.
Enhanced two-phase modelling capabilities for cavitation analysis have been identified as an area for future development to improve the simulation of cavitation and phase-change phenomena.