Numerical simulation of unsteady partial cavity flows

Cavitation is a very complicated phenomenon involving phase change, surface tension, turbulence, non-equilibrium thermodynamic effects, etc. Cavitation is unsteady in nature and occurs over a wide mnge of time and length scales. The development of advanced cavitation simulation tools should not override the physical nature of cavitation. It is essential to understand the behavior of cavitation and develop a numerical simulation method that incorpomtes the most important phenomena in detail, as much as possible. Section 1.1 describes the basic physical phenomena of cavitation. Emphasis is on various types of cavitation and their behavior on pmpeller blades. Section 1.2 reviews the development of cavitation simulation and discusses the most recent methods. The r·e.9earch objectives of this thesis are outlined in Section 1.3.