Cavitating Acoustics Modeling in Sierra/SD
Motivated by the need to simulate the effects of underwater explosion on ship structures, we develop a new cavitating acoustics formulation. The proposed approach is consistent with existing methods where the cavitation phenomenon is captured with a bilinear constitutive law. However, the new formulation is in terms of velocity potential, as opposed to the existing displacement-potential and pressure formulations. Also unique to the proposed formulation is a new generalized time-stepping procedure specific to cavitating acoustics, which has the ability to introduce numerical damping to control frothing. Numerical examples of varying complexity are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach and the ability to use velocity potential as a primary field variable for cavitating acoustics simulations.