The multi-cycle dynamics of the cavitation bubble near the solid wall with an air-entrapping hole or a hemispherical air bubble: A numerical study

Abstract

Investigating the interaction between the near-wall cavitation bubble and the air bubble has great significance for understanding the mechanism of air entrainment to alleviate cavitation in actual hydraulic engineering. To quantify the effect of the air bubble on the multi-cycle dynamics of the near-wall cavitation bubble, a more comprehensive compressible three-phase model considering the phase-change process was developed based on OpenFOAM, and corresponding validation was performed by comparing the simulated bubble shape with the published experimental values. The key features of the multi-cyclical evolution of the cavitation bubble are nicely reproduced based on the current numerical model. For the cavitation bubble near the solid wall containing a hemispherical air bubble, the simulated results reveal that the air bubble can reflect the shock wave and thus prevent it from impacting directly on the solid wall, which will help to uncover the microscopic mechanism of aeration avoiding cavitation damage. The dynamical features of the cavitation bubble at different dimensionless distances (γ1) and dimensionless sizes (ε) are investigated and analyzed. For the near-wall cavitation bubble with an air-entrapping hole, the air hole plays a crucial role in the multi-cycle dynamics of the cavitation bubble, leading to the bubble that is always far away from both the air hole and the solid wall. Thus, the current results may provide a potential application for preventing the wall damage caused by the impact of the liquid jet.