Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Date

2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Mechanical Engineering

Committee Chair

Daniel Foti

Committee Member

Amir Hadadzadeh

Committee Member

Jeffrey Marchetta

Abstract

Cavitation erosion is a significant challenge in marine and hydraulic systems because the relationship between cavitation dynamics and material damage is difficult to quantify. This study evaluates an energy-based cavitation erosion risk model using large-eddy simulations (LES) of sheet-to-cloud cavitation on a hydrofoil operating under conditions representative of experiments conducted in the United States Navy's Large Cavitation Channel (LCC). Six erosion risk indicators derived from the energy balance of a collapsing vapor structure were investigated using multiple driving-pressure fields. The results showed that indicators based on pressure derivatives contributed negligibly to the predicted erosive energy, while indicators based on the temporal variation of vapor volume fraction dominated the erosion response. A surface projection methodology and efficiency corrections were applied to convert volumetric erosive power into surface loading. The resulting model successfully identified the cavity closure region as the location of maximum erosion risk and produced trends consistent with experimentally observed erosion distributions.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest/Clarivate.

Notes

Open Access

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