Numerical Simulation of High-Pressure Water Jets in Air by an Elliptic–Blending Turbulence Model: A Parametric Study

Numerical simulations were conducted to investigate high-pressure water jets in air. The Eulerian multiphase model was employed as the computational framework. Through simulating a high-pressure water jet impinging on a flat plate, two turbulence treatment methodologies were initially examined, demonstrating that the mixture turbulence modeling approach exhibits superior predictive capability compared to the per-phase turbulence modeling approach. Subsequent analysis focused on evaluating turbulence model effects on the impact pressure distribution on the flat plate. The results obtained from the elliptic–blending turbulence model (the SST k-ω-φ-α model) and the other two industry-standard two-equation turbulence models (the realizable k-ε model and the SST k-ω model) were comparatively analyzed against experimental data. The analysis revealed that the SST k-ω-φ-α model demonstrates superior accuracy near the stagnation region. The effects of bubble diameter and surface tension were further examined. Quantitative analysis indicated that the impact pressure exhibits a decrease with decreasing bubble diameter until reaching a critical threshold, below which diameter variations exert negligible influence. Furthermore, surface tension effects were found to be insignificant for impact pressure predictions when the nozzle-to-plate distance was maintained below 100 nozzle diameters (100D). Simulations of free high-pressure water jets were performed to evaluate the model’s capability to predict long-distance jet dynamics. While the axial velocity profile showed satisfactory agreement with experimental measurements within 200D, discrepancies in water volume fraction prediction along the jet axis suggested limitations in phase interface modeling at extended propagation distances.