Experimental and numerical study of ventilated supercavitation around a cone cavitator

Abstract

In this paper, a numerical and experimental analysis of the ventilated super-cavitating flow around a cone cavitator is presented. For the first time, the experiments are conducted in an open loop water tunnel. The fluid flow velocity in the test section is between 24 and 37 m/s at a constant rate of injection. The simulations of ventilated supercavitation are provided at different velocities. The corresponding governing equations are solved numerically using the finite element method and the mixture model. Finally, the effect of significant parameters such as cavitation number, inlet velocity on drag coefficient and the shape of cavity are investigated. A comparison of the numerical and experimental results shows that the numerical method can accurately simulate the physics of the ventilated cavitation phenomenon such as the cavity shape. According to the results, the maximum cavity diameter and length declines as the cavitation number increases. With an increase in the flow velocity, the cavity length and diameter increased to 200 and 18 % respectively. At constant rate of the ventilated air, with an increase of cavitation number from 0.15 to 0.25, the drag force drops by 62 %.