Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Cavitation Regimes and Its Effects on Drag Characteristics of Wedge Shaped Bodies

Abstract

Cavitation phenomenon is defined as the process of rupturing any liquid by a decrease in pressure at nearly constant temperature. The cavities driven by the flow in a region of high pressure will implode and generate high pressure pulses leading eventually to erosion and vibration. But in supercavitation the bubbles produced by cavitation combine to form a large, stable bubble region around the supercavitating object. This phenomenon decreases the drag on the supercavitating body. Experimental testsware performed at 2-D unsteady flow for two wedge shaped bodies made before in laboratory and cavitation inception and its development were captured by a high speed camera. Then this cavitation regime around the wedge was studied numerically. In these cases CFD code was developed to simulate the unsteady and incompressible flow based on finite volume, 2D transient, with different boundary conditions. These numerical models which were evaluated experimentally depicted the capabilities of this CFD code to simulate this flow field cavitation inception, its development, and drag force in all cases. In this study we worked on two different geometries. Whether the cavitation is occurred at nose of body or not is worthy and studied by the above mentioned scheme. Moreover, we wanted to find the supercavitation regime and drag reduction for these two bodies.