NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF CAVITATING FLOW IN VENTURI NOZZLE.

Cavitation problems occurs in water flow where the local pressure reaches saturated vapour pressure, due to the sudden increase of local velocity values, forming bubbles and different forms of flow discontinuity. Water flow in the Venturi nozzle is the typical example of potentially cavitation flow. Due to the large importance of Venturi nozzles in engineering practice, it is important to determine their cavitation characteristics, such a cavitation number and loss coefficient of the nozzle. In case we are unable to obtain cavitation characteristics of the nozzle experimentally, there is the possibility to conduct numerical simulations of the flow in the Venturi nozzle. The objective of this study is to present the possibilities of obtaining cavitation characteristics of Venturi nozzles by applying numerical simulations, and to determine the optimal numerical modelling of flow in the case of Venturi nozzle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]