A dual-time central-difference interface-capturing finite volume scheme applied to cavitation modelling

This paper describes a central-difference interface-capturing scheme applied to the prediction of flows with cavitation. Compressible cavitation schemes based on standard central-difference solvers have been previously described, but the current scheme uses an incompressible formulation only previously implemented with an upwind solver. The central-difference solver offers significant advantages in computational time compared with upwind schemes. Regions of cavitation are captured rather than tracked. This means that there is no need for complex tracking and reconstruction procedures for the interface of the cavitation region. The use of such schemes on an arbitrarily unstructured mesh is no more complicated than on its structured counterpart. Results for a number of test cases are presented, with comparisons made with both experimental data and other numerical solutions. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.