Numerical investigation of the cavitation effects on the wake dynamics behind a blunt trailing edge hydrofoil

Abstract

The influence of cavitation on the wake behind a NACA 0009 hydrofoil with a truncated trailing edge has been numerically investigated using a homogeneous mixture model coupled with a controlled decay SST γ-Reθt turbulence model. Using optimal definitions of the inlet turbulent intensity and the empirical condensation and vaporization coefficients of the cavitation model, simulated results have shown a good agreement with experimental data. Notably, the numerical results exhibit negligible deviations of less than 0.7% in vortex shedding frequencies for different cavitation levels. If the size of the vortex cavitation grows, a substantial increase in both lift and drag coefficients on the hydrofoil is observed. Furthermore, the influence of cavitation on the trajectories of vortex centers and the morphology of the primary shedding vortices has been revealed using a vortex identification method. The findings highlight that the cavitation development enhances the advected velocity of the shedding vortices while decreasing the streamwise inter-vortex spacing. Consequently, both factors are found to contribute to the increase of the vortex-shedding frequency behind the NACA 0009 hydrofoil with the truncated trailing edge when cavitation appears and develops.