Characteristics of flow field around an underwater projectile with natural and ventilated cavitation

The present simulation investigates the multiphase cavitating flow around an underwater projectile. Based on the homogeneous equilibrium flow assumption, a mixture model is applied to simulate the multiphase cavitating flow including ventilated cavitation caused by air injection as well as natural cavitation. The transport equation cavitating model and a local linear low-Reynolds-number turbulence model are incorporated to the equation system. The calculations are executed based on a suite of computational fluid dynamics code. The hydrodynamics characteristics of flow field under the interaction of natural cavitation and ventilated cavitation are analyzed. The results indicate that the ventilated cavitation numbers and the drag coefficient are relative to the natural cavitation numbers and gas flow rate in the multiphase cavitating flows. © 2011 Shanghai Jiaotong University and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.