Control of unsteady partial cavitation and cloud cavitation in marine engineering and hydraulic systems

Cavitation is a process of liquid evaporation, bubble or vapor sheet formation, and further collapse of vapor structures, which plays a destructive role in many industrial applications. In marine transport and hydraulic machinery, cavitation usually occurs nearby the surface of a ship propeller and rudder, impeller blades in a pump, and distributor vanes and runner blades in a hydroturbine and causes various undesirable effects such as vibrations of frameworks and/or moving parts, material erosion, and noise enhancement. Based on an extensive literature review, this research is aimed at an experimental investigation of a passive approach to control cavitation on a benchmark hydrofoil using a wedge-type vortex generator in different flow regimes with a high Reynolds number. In this study, we employed a high-speed imaging method to explore the spatial patterns and time evolutions of cavitation structures and utilized a hydroacoustic pressure transducer to record and analyze local pressure pulsations due to the collapse of the cavities in the hydrofoil wake region. The results show that the examined control technique is quite effective and capable of hindering the formation of cloud cavities and reducing the amplitude of pressure pulsations associated with unsteady cavitation dynamics. This study provides important experimental information, which can be useful for improving industrial technologies and for promoting new developments in this particular research field.