Effect of Aeration on the Impact of a Liquid Surface with an Obstacle
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The impact of liquids on solids (or the other way around) is a very common phenomenon in nature and in industrial applications. Water and air interact during these complex free surface flow, entraining the air into the water. This type of impact known as an aerated liquid impact can cause pressure oscillations generating positive and negative forces on the structure. The liquid aeration can be a mixture of small air bubbles and water or large scale liquid structures surrounded by air. Air cushion or air pocket can also be observed. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is used to predict the fluid behavior in such applications. The methods used are often based on a multiphase flow model. The objective of this work is to model the effect of aeration on liquid impact applications and to predict the loads due to this effect on a solid obstacle. For this we have simulated multiple configurations that take into account the different types of aeration using the volume of fluid (VOF) model with an interface capturing method (ICM) in incompressible and compressible formalism. Numerical results concerning impact pressures are compared with experimental data. We find that the mesh convergence for the impact peak pressure is a major stumbling-block . On the other hand, mesh convergence of the pressure impulse may be verified.
