Analysis of different cavitation models in a laminar flow.

We compare the performance of different cavitation models in terms of vaporization and condensation rates for the correct simulation of the process. We compare homogeneous mixture models, that study the cavitation through the vapor fraction solving its transport equation and defining the formulations for the source terms. We consider 4 models: Kunz, Merkle, Schnerr-Sauer, and Saito, and evaluate their performance in the case of laminar flow around a circular cylinder at {\$}Re$=$200{\$}, already analyzed by [Gnanaskandan, Mahesh, JFM 2016]; The numerical tests are carried out adopting the interPhaseChangeFoam solver and cavitation models already present in the OpenFOAM library. The Saito model was implemented by scratch. We analyze some fundamental aspects of the cavitating flow, such as the pressure distribution over the body surface, vortex shedding frequency, the length of the attached cavity downstream the body, and the time oscillations of the entire cavity volume. The results are found to be strongly dependent on the cavitation model adopted and on the magnitude of the empirical parameters contained in the cavitation models, namely the vaporization and condensation coefficients.