Numerical and Experimental Study of a Ventilated Supercavitating Vehicle

Abstract

In this paper, the ventilated supercavities are studied both numerically and experimentally. A slender rod is considered as the solid body which has a sharp edged disk at the nose as a cavitator and special ports for air ventilation. The experiments are conducted in a recirculating water tunnel. The simulations are provided for two different algorithms in free-surface treatment, both using the VOF method but one using Youngs' algorithm in the advection of the free-surface and the other without. The comparison between numerical simulations and experiments show that the numerical method using Youngs' algorithm accurately simulates the physics of ventilated cavitation phenomena such as the cavity shape, the gas leakage and the re-entrant jet.