Simulation of cavitating fluid-Structure interaction using SPH-FE method

In the present paper, a modified version of SPH-FE is proposed to study the cavitating fluid interaction with the convergent- divergent nozzle. The additional terms of mass/momentum transfer, surface tension and pressure based phase change are added to the standard SPH equations to track the growth, convection and collapse of the cavitation phenomenon. Due to using the particle-based method for the fluid, no transitional phase is defined and the certain particle phase is determined by the absolute pressure value in comparison with vapor pressure. The comparison of the results of modified SPH with those of finite volume as a grid-based method shows that the cavitating region can be accurately modeled in the convergent-divergent nozzle. Then, the interaction of cavitating fluid flow-nozzle wall is simulated by the improved SPH-FE algorithm for the different types of steel where the good agreement is obtained in comparison with the other similar numerical methods. Also, it is concluded that considering cavitation in the fluid flow can generally change the nozzle behavior slightly and increase the stress values inside its body. (C) 2020 International Association for Mathematics and Computers in Simulation (IMACS). Published by Elsevier B.Y. All rights reserved.