A numerical study on the effects of cavitation on orifice flow

Previous experimental studies have shown better atomization of sprays generated by high-pressure liquid injectors when cavitation occurs inside the nozzle. It has been proposed that the collapse of traveling cavitation bubbles increases the disturbances inside the liquid flow. These disturbances will later trigger the instabilities in the emerged jet and cause a shorter breakup distance. In this paper, effects of cavitation on increasing the disturbances in the flow through the orifice of an atomizer are studied. In previous cavitation models, spherical cavitation bubbles are considered. Here, the cavitation bubbles are allowed to deform as they travel through the orifice. Dynamics of the cavitation bubble, traveling in the separated shear layer in the orifice, is analyzed through a one-way coupling between the orifice flow and bubble dynamics. Effects of shear strain, normal strain, and pressure variation are examined. Three mechanisms are suggested that could be responsible for the increase in disturbances in the flow due to cavitation. These mechanisms are monopole, quadrupole, and vorticities generated during growth and collapse of cavitation bubbles. The effects of these mechanisms are estimated by postprocessing of the solutions to the Navier–Stokes equations to identify monopole and quadrupole behaviors.