Study of Compressibility Effects on Turbulent Cavitating Flows

A compressible, multiphase, one-fluid RANS solver was developed to study cavitating flows. The interaction between turbulence and two-phase structures is complex and not well known. Particularly, compressible effects on turbulence in the mixture due to the presence of the two phases are generally not taken into account. In the framework of averaged approach, we put in evidence the presence of compressible terms in the turbulent transport equations and propose to test several closure relations developed to aerodynamic turbulent flows. Numerical computations are performed on two Venturi geometries and are compared with experimental data.