Generation and Evolution of Cavitation Bubbles in Volume Alternate Cavitation (VAC)

Abstract Cavitation generation methods have been used in multifarious directions because of their diversity, and numerous studies and discussions have been conducted on cavitation generation methods. This study aims to explore the generating mechanism and evolution law of volume alternate cavitation (VAC). In the VAC, liquid water is placed in an airtight container with a variable volume. As the volume alternately changes, the liquid water inside the container continues to cavitate. Then, the mixture turbulence model and in-cylinder dynamic grid model are adopted to conduct computational fluid dynamics simulation of volume alternate cavitation. In the simulation, the cloud images at seven heights on the central axis are monitored, and the phenomenon and mechanism of height and eccentricity are analyzed in detail. By employing the cavitation flow visualization method, the generating mechanism and evolution law of cavitation are revealed. The synergistic effects of experiments and high-speed camera capturing confirm the correctness of the simulation results. In the experiment, the volume change stroke of the airtight container is set to 20 mm, the volume change frequency is 18 Hz, and the shooting frequency of the high-speed camera is set to 10000 FPS. The experimental results indicate that the position of the cavitation phenomenon has a reasonable law during the whole evolution cycle of the cavitation cloud. Also, the volume alternation cycle corresponds to the generation, development, and collapse stages of cavitation bubbles.