CFD-based numerical study on the ventilated supercavitating flow of the surface vehicle

Abstract

When supercavitation technique was used in surface vehicle, supercavitating flow was formed on the surface of the submerged body via artificial ventilation, which greatly reduced the navigation resistance and enhanced the navigation speed. By combining the VOF model and k−ω SST turbulence model, this study performed numerical simulation on the formed supercavitating flow field on the submerged body of the surface vehicle during artificial ventilation and examined the existence of the strut on the cavity form when the navigation parameters varied and the change regulation of the resistance coefficient of navigation body. As the navigation inclination angle changed, the pressure coefficient exhibited an asymmetrical distribution on two sides of the strut. At a large navigation inclination angle, the supercavities were more significantly affected by the strut and the drag resistance performance was poor. With increasing navigation depth, high-pressure and low pressure regions around the strut expanded, and the sunken separation position of the cavities moved forward, resulting in the coating area of the vehicle by the formed cavities dropped and the resistance increased. As the navigation speed increased, the ratio of drag reduction increased gradually. After the navigation speed exceeded to a certain value, further increasing navigation speed did not increase, but gradually decreased the ratio of drag reduction.