Towards SPH simulations of cavitating flows with an EoSB cavitation model

The smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) research community has pursued simulating cavitating flows during the past decades, but so far there are no accurate and stable SPH-based cavitation models. This paper aims to present an attempt to predict cavitation phenomena within the SPH framework. To this end, an equation-of-state-based (EoSB) cavitation model is proposed in the SPH context to capture the inception and development of cavitating flows. In particular, the SPH technique named volume adaptive scheme (VAS) is employed to guarantee isotropic particle distribution when cavitating regions rapidly expand or shrink. Besides, with the purpose of preventing particle clumping and avoiding spurious flow voids induced by negative pressures, two SPH techniques called particle shifting technique (PST) and tensile instability control (TIC) are respectively adopted in the SPH model to further improve the numerical accuracy and stability. Finally, in order to make the present SPH model more applicable to problems with a high Reynolds number, a large eddy simulation (LES) model is also employed to take turbulence effects into account. It is evidently demonstrated that the present SPH model can provide a basically accurate prediction for several cavitation phenomena including cavitating areas and pressure distributions.