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Virginia Tech

Experimental Study of Two-Phase Cavitating Flows and Data Analysis

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

Cavitation can be defined as the breakdown of a liquid (either static or in motion) medium under very low pressure. The hydrodynamic happened in high-speed flow, where local pressure in liquid falls under the saturating pressure thus the liquid vaporizes to form the cavity. During the evolution and collapsing of cavitation bubbles, extreme physical conditions like high-temperature, high-pressure, shock-wave, and high-speed micro-jets can be generated. Such a phenomenon shall be prevented in hydraulic or astronautical machinery due to the induced erosion and noise, while it can be utilized to intensify some treatment processes of chemical, food, and pharmaceutical industries, to shorten sterilization times and lower energy consumption. Advances in the understanding of the physical processes of cavitating flows are challenging, mainly due to the lack of quantitative experimental data on the two-phase structures and dynamics inside the opaque cavitation areas. This dissertation is aimed at finding out the physical mechanisms governing the cavitation instabilities and making contributions in controlling hydraulic cavitation for engineering applications. In this thesis, cavitation developed in various convergent-divergent (Venturi) channels was studied experimentally using the ultra-fast synchrotron X-ray imaging, LIF Particle Image Velocimetry, and high-speed photography techniques, to (1) investigate the internal structures and evolution of bubble dynamics in cavitating flows, with velocity information obtained for two phases; (2) measure the slip velocity between the liquid and the vapor to provide the validation data for the numerical cavitation models; (3) consider the thermodynamic effects of cavitation to establish the relation between the cavitation extent and the fluid temperature, then and optimize the cavitation working condition in water; (4) seek the coherent structures of the complicated high-turbulent cavitating flow to reduce its randomness using data-driven methods.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Doctor of Philosophy
Level thesis:degree_level
doctoral
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Aerospace Engineering
Department dc:contributor.department
Aerospace and Ocean Engineering
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2022

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Ge, Mingming
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Coutier-Delgosha, Olivier
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Devenport, William J.
  • Liu, Yang
  • Brizzolara, Stefano

Subjects

dc:subject × 5

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright
Language dc:language.iso
en

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:34337
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/110332

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Ge, Mingming. Experimental Study of Two-Phase Cavitating Flows and Data Analysis. doctoral thesis, Virginia Tech, 2022. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/110332