Tomographic PIV measurement of a re-entrant jet in a cavitating venturi

Abstract

Partial cavitation occurs when low-pressure regions caused by separated shear layers are filled with vapours. Partial cavitation is inherently unsteady and leads to periodic cloud shedding. The periodically generated re-entrant jet travelling beneath the vapour cavity is considered as one of the mechanisms responsible for the periodic cloud shedding (Callenaere et al. (2001)). However, the exact physical mechanism that drives the shedding remains unclear. The re-entrant flow exists as a thin liquid film wedged between the wall and the vapour cavity. The flow in this thin film is generally assumed to move with the same order of magnitude as the bulk flow, yet in the opposite direction. There have been several attempts to measure the velocity of the re-entrant flow to get insight into the physics of re-entrant flow and its contribution to cloud shedding. However, the flow topology of the re-entrant jet poses a major challenge to experimentally study it. The unsteady nature of the flow and the opacity of the cavitation cloud adds to the further complexity. In this work, we show that tomographic PIV (Elsinga et al. (2006)) can be extended to exploit the flow topology to accurately measure the velocity and thickness of the re-entrant flow. This in turn provides better insight into the role of re-entrant flow in periodic cloud shedding.