A new barotropic model for simulating compressible cavitating flows

This paper introduces a new barotropic model integrated into a general pressure-based solver for the comprehensive simulation of compressible cavitating flows. This new model can predict the phase transition between liquid and vapor phases, while also incorporating the compressibility of the liquid phase. The primary advantage of the model lies in its simplicity and ease of implementation. Moreover, the model successfully captures the pressure waves arising from the collapse of the cavities. To verify its implementation and to validate its capabilities, three cases with progressively increasing complexity are simulated. Comparative assessments, referencing analytical solutions and available experimental results, are conducted to evaluate the model's performance in simulating compressible cavitating flows compared to the Zwart-Gerber-Belamri (ZGB) compressible liquid model. For all cases, the numerical results using the new barotropic model exhibit a similar or even better accuracy compared to those obtained using the ZGB compressible liquid model with the default empirical coefficients. Moreover, these results demonstrate consistent agreement with reference analytical solutions, as well as numerical or experimental data.