Modeling liquid hydrogen cavitating flow with the full cavitation model

Cavitation is the formation of vapor bubbles within a liquid where flow dynamics cause the local static pressure to drop below the vapor pressure. This paper strives towards developing an effective computational strategy to simulate liquid hydrogen cavitation relevant to liquid rocket propulsion applications. The aims are realized by performing a steady state computational fluid dynamic (CFD) study of liquid hydrogen flow over a 2D hydrofoil and an axisymmetric ogive in Hord's reports with a so-called full cavitation model. The thermodynamic effect was demonstrated with the assumption of thermal equilibrium between the gas phase and liquid phase. Temperature-dependent fluid thermodynamic properties were specified along the saturation line from the “Gaspak 3.2” databank. Justifiable agreement between the computed surface pressure, temperature and experimental data of Hord was obtained. Specifically, a global sensitivity analysis is performed to examine the sensitivity of the turbulent computations to the wall grid resolution, wall treatments and changes in model parameters. A proper near-wall model and grid resolution were suggested. The full cavitation model with default model parameters provided solutions with comparable accuracy to sheet cavitation in liquid hydrogen for the two geometries.