Experimental study on unsteady characteristics of the transient cavitation flow

Abstract

The characteristics of unsteady cavitation flow under different cavitation numbers are investigated experimentally. An optical test rig is designed to visualize the cavitation flow and the cavity length is defined based on high-speed camera technology. The development of cavitation flow can be divided into inception and fusion region, expansion region and collapse region. Due to the interaction between the re-entrant jet and the cavity interface, the cavitation bubbles near the solid wall collapse earlier than them in the downstream. The cavitation number is also the important factor determining the cavity length pulsation. Further analysis shows that the smaller the cavitation number, the smaller the frequency of cavity length fluctuations and the larger the mean cavity length. The cavitation intensity is stronger at lower cavitation number. Meanwhile, the cycle collapsing frequency of cavitation is around 220–320 Hz. With the decrease of cavitation number, the amplitude of cavitation pulsation increases while the corresponding collapsing frequency decreases.