Prediction of Cavitation Bubble Dynamics in a Tube with High-Speed Internal Flow

Abstract

: Cavitation in confined internal flows plays a crucial role in a wide range of natural and engineering systems. In the present work, a numerical model, based on a unified theory for bubble dynamics, is developed to simulate the morphological evolution of a single cavitation bubble traversing a microchannel nozzle. By incorporating ambient pressure and velocity fields extracted from computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, the model predicts bubble growth, collapse, and rebound in non-uniform flow environments, thereby providing insight into the effects of key governing parameters on bubble dynamics within micro-channel nozzles. The results indicate that the initial radial position of the bubble, the initial ambient pressure, and the initial bubble radius all have pronounced effects on bubble morphological evolution by modifying the effective expansion distance and effective expansion duration. These changes, in turn, affect both the intensity and the spatial distribution of the transient impact loads imposed on the micro-channel walls.