Numerical Study of the Transition Between Reentrant Jet and Twin Vortex Flow Regimes in Ventilated Cavitation

Abstract

Contrary to natural cavitation, ventilated cavitation is controllable and is not harmful. It is particularly used to reduce the drag of the hydraulic vehicles. The ventilated cavitation is characterized by various gas regimes. The mechanisms of ventilated cavitation are investigated in the present work with CFD based on a 2D solver. The attention is especially focused on the transition between the reentrant jet and twin vortex regimes. The results confirm that the product of ventilated cavitation number and Froude number is lower than 1 (σcFr 1) in the reentrant jet regime, as reported in the literature. Further analysis shows that ventilated cavitation is significantly influenced by the natural cavitation number.