Suppressing tip-leakage vortex cavitation by overhanging grooves

Abstract

In the present paper, a new control method for tip-leakage vortex (TLV) cavitation is proposed. This method, which combines the effects of grooves and winglets, is made of overhanging grooves (OHGs) fitted at the tip of a hydrofoil. Experimental and numerical investigations are conducted to evaluate the performances of OHGs in terms of TLV cavitation suppression. The results are systematically compared with the baseline, conventional grooves (CGs) and anti-cavitation lip (ACL) and a significant improvement of TLV cavitation suppression is obtained with the OHGs. We also carried out a primary optimization design of the OHGs and a more effective suppression on TLV cavitation is obtained for small gaps and TLV cavitation is almost suppressed for middle and large gaps. The underlying reasons for TLV cavitation mitigation are discussed in detail with the help of numerical simulations. It indicates that for small gap sizes, OHGs can effectively weaken the strength of both TLV and tip-separation vortex (TSV) and mitigate TLV cavitation. For middle and large gap sizes, it is found that OHGs will induce an increase in the TLV core size, which further increases local minimum pressure. The influence of OHGs on the performance of hydrofoil is also examined, which indicates that the fluctuation of TLV cavitation can be effectively suppressed by OHGs and no significant alteration of time-averaged drag and lift is induced by OHGs. Our work shows that the OHGs can effectively suppress TLV cavitation with limited influence on the performances of hydrofoil in a large range of the gap sizes, which is a promising method for the control of TLV cavitation in hydraulic machinery.