Cavitation bubbles collapse characteristics behind a convex body

Abstract

Cavitation bubbles behind a convex body were experimentally studied by a high speed camera and a hydrophone synchronously. The experiments were conducted in a circulating water tunnel with five various contraction ratios: β = 0.497, β = 0.6, β = 0.697, β = 0.751, and β = 0.799. The distributions of the cavitation bubble collapse positions behind the five different convex bodies were obtained by combining the images taken by the high speed camera. According to the collapse positions, it was found that no cavitation bubble was collapsed in the region near the wall until the ratio of the water head loss over the convex body height was larger than 20, which can be used to predict if the cavitation damage would occur in the tunnel with orifice energy dissipaters.