High-resolution large eddy simulations of cavitating gasoline–ethanol blends

Cavitation plays an important role in the formation of sprays in fuel injection systems. With the increasing use of gasoline–ethanol blends, there is a need to understand how changes in fluid properties due to the use of these fuels can alter cavitation behavior. Gasoline–ethanol blends are azeotropic mixtures whose properties are difficult to model. We have tabulated the thermodynamic properties of gasoline–ethanol blends using a method developed for flash-boiling simulations. The properties of neat gasoline and ethanol were obtained from National Institute of Standards and Technology REFPROP data, and blends from 0% to 85% ethanol by mass have been tabulated. We have undertaken high-resolution three-dimensional numerical simulations of cavitating flow in a 500-µm-diameter submerged nozzle using the in-house HRMFoam homogeneous relaxation model constructed from the OpenFOAM toolkit. The simulations are conducted at 1 MPa inlet pressure and atmospheric outlet pressure, corresponding to a cavitation number range of 1.066–1.084 and a Reynolds number range of 15,000–40,000. For the pure gasoline case, the numerical simulations are compared with synchrotron X-ray radiography measurements. Despite significant variation in the fluid properties, the distribution of cavitation vapor in the nozzle is relatively unaffected by the gasoline–ethanol ratio. The vapor remains attached to the nozzle wall, resulting in an unstable annular two-phase jet in the outlet. Including turbulence at the conditions studied does not significantly change mixing behavior, because the thermal nonequilibrium at the vapor–liquid interfaces acts to low-pass filter the turbulent fluctuations in both the nozzle boundary layer and jet mixing layer.