The characteristics of unsteady cavitation around a sphere

Abstract

The unsteady cavitation typically includes three processes: the growth of cavitation, the instability and shedding of cavitation, and the collapse of cloud cavitation and the regeneration of attached cavitation. In this paper, the unsteady features of the cavitating flow past a sphere are investigated. A detached eddy simulation turbulence model and a transport equation cavitation model are used to model the cavitating flow. The numerical results give the unsteady process of cavitation at different cavitation numbers (0.36 < σ < 1.0), which cover the cavitation state from inception to supercavitation. When the cavitation number 0.8 < σ < 1.0, the flow instability belongs to the single frequency mode; when the cavitation number σ < 0.8, the flow instability becomes the dual-frequency mode. We analyzed the Strouhal (St) number based on the length of the cavitation and found that the St numbers are stable around 0.5 and 0.2 in the dual-frequency mode. In this mode, the high frequency corresponds to the frequency of the large-scale cavity shedding caused by repeated re-entrant jets. The low frequency, caused by the combination of wake flow and cavitation, is close to the natural frequency of the sphere. In addition, the cavity leading edge position and cavity morphology are analyzed in details. Some of the numerical results are compared with existing experimental data.