Computational study of the cavitation phenomenon and its interaction with the turbulence developed in diesel injector nozzles by Large Eddy Simulation (LES)

In the present paper, a homogeneous equilibrium model with a barotropic equation of state has been used for modeling cavitation in a real multi-hole microsac nozzle. The turbulence effects have been taking into account by Large Eddy Simulation (LES), using the Smagorinsky model as the sub-grid scale turbulent model and the Van Driest model for the wall damping. Firstly, the code has been validated at real operating diesel engine conditions with experimental data in terms of mass flow, momentum flux and effective velocity, showing that the model is able to predict with a high level of confidence the behavior of the internal flow at cavitating conditions. Once validated, the code has allowed to study in depth the turbulence developed in the discharge orifices and its interaction with cavitation phenomenon.