City Research Online

Abstract

Modern Diesel engines with high injection pressures can suffer from cavitation erosion phenomena. Signs of cavitation erosion in automotive components can manifest in high pressure liquid systems components (e.g. injectors, valves and pumps), as well as in the narrow fluid regions next to the cylinder liners on both the water cooling jacket side and the ring assembly side. Special attention must also be given during the design of marine propellers and water turbines, since the performances and the lifespan of these components mainly depends by the appearance of cavitation and, potentially, erosion.Cavitation erosion alters metal devices by changing their geometry from the original design, with consequences on the overall system performances. Since the lifetime of the components can be significantly shortened due to cavitation erosion, numerical and experimental investigations are usually carried out during the design process to evaluate the risk of incurring in cavitation erosion. It is then of crucial importance for the industry to have access to validated numerical models for the prediction of cavitation erosion within the softwares used for the evaluation of new designs. The scope of this work is then to develop a state–of–the–art numerical framework for the prediction of cavitation erosion in a commercially available software. For this reason, liquid compressibility models are implemented in the software with both, analytical formulations and tabular data, commonly used by the industry. The solver capability to correctly resolve pressure wave velocities is proven with simple 1D test cases, comparing the simulation results against analytical solutions. A novel scientific contribution is made by applying the multifluid model to cavitating flows, thus allowing to model slip velocity between the liquid and the vapor phase. The developed numerical framework for the simulation of cavitating flows at erosive conditions is validated against experimental results of simplified geometries and the obtained results about the effect of viscosity variability of commercial diesel showed the importance of fluid properties for the investigation of cavitation erosion. For the first time, pressure peaks related to the collapse of vapor clouds are recorded due to end of injection events and the effect of actual erosion patterns is investigated in terms of internal injector flow and spray. All the developed methods are implemented in a software commercialized by AVL GmbH,therefore of immediate use to engineers for industrial applications.

Publication Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Subjects:	T Technology > TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery
Departments:	Doctoral Theses School of Science & Technology > School of Science & Technology Doctoral Theses School of Science & Technology

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