Investigation of Unsteady Sheet Cavitation and Cloud Cavitation Mechanisms

1999 ◽  
Vol 121 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. M. Pham ◽  
F. Larrarte ◽  
D. H. Fruman

Sheet cavitation on a foil section and, in particular, its unsteady characteristics leading to cloud cavitation, were experimentally investigated using high-speed visualizations and fluctuating pressure measurements. Two sources of sheet cavitation instability were evidenced, the re-entrant jet and small interfacial waves. The dynamics of the re-entrant jet was studied using surface electrical probes. Its mean velocity at different distances from the leading edge was determined and its role in promoting the unsteadiness of the sheet cavitation and generating large cloud shedding was demonstrated. The effect of gravity on the dynamics of the re-entrant jet and the development of interfacial perturbations were examined and interpreted. Finally, control of cloud cavitation using various means, such as positioning a tiny obstacle (barrier) on the foil surface or performing air injection through a slit situated in the vicinity of the leading edge, was investigated. It was shown that these were very effective methods for decreasing the amplitude of the instabilities and even eliminating them.

1997 ◽  
Vol 119 (4) ◽  
pp. 788-794 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Kawanami ◽  
H. Kato ◽  
H. Yamaguchi ◽  
M. Tanimura ◽  
Y. Tagaya

Generation mechanism of cloud cavitation on a hydrofoil section was investigated in a sequence of experiments through observation of cloud cavitation by high-speed video and high-speed photo as well as pressure measurements by pressure pick-ups and a hydrophone. The mechanism was also investigated by controlling cloud cavitation with an obstacle fitted on the foil surface. From the results of these experiments, it was found that the collapse of a sheet cavity is triggered by a re-entrant jet rushing from the trailing edge to the leading edge of the sheet cavity, and consequently, the sheet cavity is shed in the vicinity of its leading edge and thrown downstream as a cluster of bubbles called cloud cavity. In other words, the re-entrant jet gives rise to cloud cavitation. Moreover, cloud cavitation could be controlled effectively by a small obstacle placed on the foil. It resulted in reduction of foil drag and cavitation noise.


Author(s):  
Weiping Yu ◽  
Xianwu Luo ◽  
Yao Zhang ◽  
Bin Ji ◽  
Hongyuan Xu

The prediction of cavitation in a design procedure is very important for fluid machinery. However, the behaviors of cavitation development in the flow passage are believed to be much different due to scale effects, when the characteristic size varies greatly for fluid machines such as pumps, turbines and propellers. In order to understand the differences in cavitation development, the evolution of cavity pattern in two hydro foils were recorded by high-speed video apparatus. Both foils have the same section profile, and their chord lengths are 70mm and 14mm respectively. For comparison, the cavitating flows around two foils were numerically simulated using a cavitation model based on Rayleigh-Plesset equation and SST k-ω turbulence model. The experiments depicted that for both hydro foils, there was attached sheet cavitation near the leading edge, which separated from the rear part of the cavity and collapsed near the foil trailing edge. There was clear cloud cavitation in the case of the mini foil. The results also indicated that the numerical simulation captured the cavitation evolution for the ordinary foil quite well compared with the experiments, but could hardly predict the cloud cavitation for the mini foil. Thus, it is believed that both the cavitation model and the turbulence model should be carefully treated for the scale effect on cavitation development in fluid machinery.


Author(s):  
Baoling Cui ◽  
Jie Chen

Cavitation instabilities in a high-speed inducer at a design flow rate were investigated for different cavitation numbers in numerical simulations and visual experiments. On the basis of a shear stress transport k–ω turbulence model and Zwart–Gerber–Belamri cavitation model, the transient cavitating flow in a high-speed centrifugal pump with an inducer is numerically simulated using ANSYS-CFX 15.0 software. Visual experiments were carried out to capture the evolution of cavitating flow in the inducer by using a high-speed camera. The performance and cavitation characteristic curves from numerical simulation agree with those from experiment. With a decreasing cavitation number, the cavitation development in the high-speed inducer goes through incipient cavitation, developing cavitation, critical cavitation, and deteriorated cavitation and presents vortex cavitation, sheet cavitation, cloud cavitation, backflow cavitation, and a cavitation surge. The region having a high vapor volume fraction basically coincides with the region of low local pressure at the same cavitation number. The position of largish blade loading on the inducer changes with the development of cavitation. A cavitation surge as one type of cavitation instability appears in the inducer at lower cavitation numbers. The drop or rise of the head coefficient is affected by an increasing or decreasing cavitation area in the cycle of a cavitation surge.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Fangyuan Lou ◽  
John Charles Fabian ◽  
Nicole Leanne Key

This paper investigates the aerodynamics of a transonic impeller using static pressure measurements. The impeller is a high-speed, high-pressure-ratio wheel used in small gas turbine engines. The experiment was conducted on the single stage centrifugal compressor facility in the compressor research laboratory at Purdue University. Data were acquired from choke to near-surge at four different corrected speeds (Nc) from 80% to 100% design speed, which covers both subsonic and supersonic inlet conditions. Details of the impeller flow field are discussed using data acquired from both steady and time-resolved static pressure measurements along the impeller shroud. The flow field is compared at different loading conditions, from subsonic to supersonic inlet conditions. The impeller performance was strongly dependent on the inducer, where the majority of relative diffusion occurs. The inducer diffuses flow more efficiently for inlet tip relative Mach numbers close to unity, and the performance diminishes at other Mach numbers. Shock waves emerging upstream of the impeller leading edge were observed from 90% to 100% corrected speed, and they move towards the impeller trailing edge as the inlet tip relative Mach number increases. There is no shock wave present in the inducer at 80% corrected speed. However, a high-loss region near the inducer throat was observed at 80% corrected speed resulting in a lower impeller efficiency at subsonic inlet conditions.


2009 ◽  
Vol 23 (03) ◽  
pp. 413-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
JI FEI WU ◽  
ZHAO LIN FAN ◽  
XIN FU LUO

An experimental investigation was conducted in a high speed wind tunnel to explore the effects of mass-injection on cavity flow characteristics. Detailed static-pressure and fluctuating pressure measurements were obtained at the cavity floor to enable the effects of the mass-injection at the leading edge to be determined. Results indicate that varying mass-injection hole number and the flux rate of mass-injection has no significant effect on cavity flow characteristics. However, mass-injection can reduce the cavity static pressure gradient when the cavity flow type is transitional-cavity flow. The study also indicates that Mach number can influence the effect of mass-injection on cavity fluctuating pressure distributions, and at supersonic speeds, mass-injection can suppress the cavity tones effectively.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haiyu Liu ◽  
Pengcheng Lin ◽  
Fangping Tang ◽  
Ye Chen ◽  
Wenpeng Zhang ◽  
...  

In order to study the energy loss of bi-directional hydraulic machinery under cavitation conditions, this paper uses high-speed photography combined with six-axis force and torque sensors to collect cavitating flow images and lift signals of S-shaped hydrofoils simultaneously in a cavitation tunnel. The experimental results show that the stall angle of attack of the S-shaped hydrofoil is at ±12° and that the lift characteristics are almost symmetrical about +1°. Choosing α = +6° and α = −4° with almost equal average lift for comparison, it was found that both cavitation inception and cloud cavitation inception were earlier at α = −4° than at α = +6°, and that the cavitation length at α = −4° grew significantly faster than at α = +6°. When α = +6°, the cavity around the S-shaped hydrofoil undergoes a typical cavitation stage as the cavitation number decreases: from incipient cavitation to sheet cavitation to cloud cavitation. However, when α = −4°, as the cavitation number decreases, the cavitation phase goes through a developmental process from incipient cavitation to sheet cavitation to cloud cavitation to sheet cavitation to cloud cavitation, mainly because the shape of the S-shaped hydrofoil at the negative angle of attack affects the flow of the cavity tails, which is not sufficient to form re-entrant jets that cuts off the sheet cavitation. The formation mechanism of cloud cavitation at the two different angles of attack (α = +6°、−4°) is the same, both being due to the movement of the re-entrant jet leading to the unstable shedding of sheet cavity. The fast Fourier analysis reveals that the fluctuations of the lift signals under cloud cavitation are significantly higher than those under non-cavitation, and the main frequencies of the lift signals under cloud cavitation were all twice the frequency of the cloud cavitation shedding.


Author(s):  
Takaki Igoshi ◽  
Yuki Uchinono ◽  
Emosi Koroitamana ◽  
Koichi Ishizaka ◽  
Satoshi Watanabe ◽  
...  

The installation of inducer upstream of main impeller is an effective method to improve the suction performance of turbopump. However, various types of cavitation instabilities are known to occur even at the designed flow rate as well as in the partial flow rate range. In the present study, we focus on the leading edge sweep of inducer and investigate its effect on the suction performance as well as on the onset of cavitation surge phenomenon. Flow measurements including casing wall pressure measurements, high-speed video observations, and limiting streamline observations are carried out, and discussions will be made based on those results about the influence of backward leading edge sweep on the internal flow of the inducer as well as its relation to the cavitation performance.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (18) ◽  
pp. 3736
Author(s):  
An Yu ◽  
Xincheng Wang ◽  
Zhipeng Zou ◽  
Qinghong Tang ◽  
Huixiang Chen ◽  
...  

To provide theoretical basis for cavitation noise control, the cavitation evolution around a hydrofoil and its induced noise were numerically investigated. A modified turbulence model and Zwart cavitation model were employed to calculate the flow field and predict the cavitation phenomenon accurately. Then, the acoustic analogy method based on the Ffowcs Williams-Hawking (FW-H) equation was applied to analyze the cavitation-induced noise. Seven cavitation numbers were selected for analysis. Acoustic power spectral density (PSD) and acoustic pressure were investigated to establish the relationship between cavitation number and their acoustic characteristics. It was indicated that as cavitation number decreases, cavitation cycle length gets shorter and the magnitude of acoustic power spectral density increases dramatically. One peak value of acoustic power spectral density induced by the extending and retracting of leading-edge cavitation can be obtained under sheet cavitation conditions, while under cloud cavitation, two peak values of acoustic power spectral density can be obtained and are induced by superposition from leading-edge cavitation and trailing vortex.


1998 ◽  
Vol 355 ◽  
pp. 255-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. E. REISMAN ◽  
Y.-C. WANG ◽  
C. E. BRENNEN

This paper describes an investigation of the dynamics and acoustics of cloud cavitation, the structures which are often formed by the periodic breakup and collapse of a sheet or vortex cavity. This form of cavitation frequently causes severe noise and damage, though the precise mechanism responsible for the enhancement of these adverse effects is not fully understood. In this paper, we investigate the large impulsive surface pressures generated by this type of cavitation and correlate these with the images from high-speed motion pictures. This reveals that several types of propagating structures (shock waves) are formed in a collapsing cloud and dictate the dynamics and acoustics of collapse. One type of shock wave structure is associated with the coherent collapse of a well-defined and separate cloud when it is convected into a region of higher pressure. This type of global structure causes the largest impulsive pressures and radiated noise. But two other types of structure, termed ‘crescent-shaped regions’ and ‘leading-edge structures’ occur during the less-coherent collapse of clouds. These local events are smaller and therefore produce less radiated noise but the interior pressure pulse magnitudes are almost as large as those produced by the global events.The ubiquity and severity of these propagating shock wave structures provides a new perspective on the mechanisms reponsible for noise and damage in cavitating flows involving clouds of bubbles. It would appear that shock wave dynamics rather than the collapse dynamics of single bubbles determine the damage and noise in many cavitating flows.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2057 (1) ◽  
pp. 012033
Author(s):  
S G Skripkin ◽  
M A Tsoy ◽  
A Y Kravtsova

Abstract Using digital processing of high-speed visualization data on a cavitation flow near NACA hydrofoil with critically low aspect ratio, the frequencies of the formation and separation of cavities in the flow are identified. It is shown that in the case of development of cloud cavitation the main dimensionless frequency varies within 0.4, which corresponds to the type of internal instability. The Strouhal number corresponds to the frequency of attached cavity occurrence and varies in range from 0.6 to 0.8. The Strouhal numbers calculated in third mode exceed 1. This mode corresponds to the forming of very small cavities near the leading edge of hydrofoil.


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