A multi-scale study on the bubble dynamics of cryogenic cavitation

Abstract

This study aims to construct a multi-scale cavitation model for unsteady cryogenic cavitation CFD. Many elementary physical processes of bubbles (i.e, nucleation, growth/shrink, evaporation/condensation, coalescence/fission, collapse, bubblebubble interaction, bubble-turbulence interaction, and so on) emerge in cryogenic cavitation where some of the processes have not been understood well. In this paper, we mainly focused the molecular processes in homogeneous liquid-vapor nucleation with noncondensable gas solution by using Molecular Dynamics (MD) method. Bubble nucleation in liquid oxygen including helium, nitrogen, or argon was simulated. Molecular interaction was given by Lennard-Jones potential, and basically, each potential parameter was defined so that a saturation curve obtained by MD data was consistent with an experimental value. In the case that helium was impurity, a bubble nucleus was formed by density fluctuation at a lower concentration while a cluster constituted with helium molecules formed a bubble nucleus at a higher concentration, and the nucleation point becomes closer to the saturation point of pure oxygen when helium molecules form clusters. On the other hand, in the case that nitrogen or argon was the impurity, the above-mentioned clustering was not observed clearly at a concentration where helium made clusters, and these impurities have weaker action to make clusters and cavitation bubble nuclei compared with helium.