Cavitation on a semicircular leading-edge plate and NACA0015 hydrofoil: Visualization and velocity measurement

Using high-speed visualization and particle image velocimetry (PIV), cavitating flows near a plane plate with a rounded leading edge and NACA0015 hydrofoil at angles of attack from 0° to 9° are studied. In the experiments, several known types of cavitation, as well as some differences, were detected with variation of the cavitation number. In particular, at small angles of attack (up to 3°), cavitation on the plate appears in the form of a streak array; on the hydrofoil, it appears in the form of individual bubbles. For the NACA0015 hydrofoil, isolated and intermittent streaks are divided and grow in regimes with developed cavitation; then, however, they merge in bubble clouds and form an extremely regular cellular structure. With an increase in the angle of attack to 9°, the structure of the cavitation cavity on the hydrofoil is changed by the streak structure, like in the case with the plate. In this work, it is shown that PIV permits one to measure the velocity in cavitating flows, in particular, within the gas-vapor phase. It was established from the analysis of distributions of the average flow velocity and moments of velocity fluctuations that the cavitation generation is caused by the development of the carrier fluid flow near the leading edge of the hydrofoil. Down the stream, however, the flow structure strongly depends on the cavitation regime, which is seen from the comparison of the distributions with the case of a single-phase flow. The presented measurements qualitatively verify general trends and show some quantitative distinctions for the two considered flowpast bodies. © 2014, Pleiades Publishing, Inc.