Numerical simulation of cavitating injector flow and liquid spray break-up by combination of Eulerian-Eulerian and Volume-of-Fluid methods

The present study proposes a new method for numerical simulations of spray break-up of liquid jets with cavitation in the nozzle. A three-phase system consisting of liquid, vapor and gas is applied for the Volume-of-Fluid simulation of the liquid disintegration in order to resolve the liquid-gas interface. To keep the numerical effort moderate, the liquid-vapor interface is not resolved by the computational grid, mass and momentum transfer are described within the Eulerian-Eulerian framework. The numerical method is validated against experimental data from the literature, where a simplified injector-like geometry is operated at different injection pressures in order to show different cavitation regimes. The good agreement in the comparison of the velocity profiles in the injector, and in the visual comparison of cavitation cloud and spray pattern, demonstrate the feasibility of the method.