Simulations of unsteady cavitating turbulent flow in a Francis turbine using the RANS method and the improved mixture model of two-phase flows

This paper reports the simulation results for the unsteady cavitating turbulent flow in a Francis turbine using the mixture model for cavity–liquid two-phase flows. The RNG k–ε turbulence model is employed in the Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes equations in this study. In the mixture model, an improved expression for the mass transfer is employed which is based on evaporation and condensation mechanisms with considering the effects of the non-dissolved gas, the turbulence, the tension of interface at cavity and the effect of phase change rate and so on. The computing domain includes the guide vanes, the runner, and the draft tube, which is discretized with a full three-dimensional mesh system of unstructured tetrahedral shapes. The finite volume method is used to solve the governing equations of the mixture model and a full coupled method is combined into the algorithm to accelerate the solution. The computing results with the mixture model have been compared with those by the single-phase flow model as well as the experimental data. The simulation results show that the cavitating flow computation based on the improved mixture model agrees much better with experimental data than that by the single-phase flow calculation, in terms of the amplitude and dominated frequency of the pressure fluctuation. It is also observed from the present simulations that the amplitude of the pressure fluctuation at small flow rate is larger than that at large flow rate, which accords with the experimental data.