Stabilization of cloud cavitation instabilities using Cylindrical Cavitating-bubble Generators (CCGs)

Abstract

Abstract Unsteady cloud cavitation phenomenon is an important subject due to its undesirable effects in various applications such as ship propeller, rudder and hydraulic machinery systems. We present an efficient passive control method to control the cavitation instabilities which may be caused by the shedding of cavity structures in the vicinity of the solid surface of an immersible body. We proposed a passive control method so called Cylindrical Cavitating-bubble Generators (CCGs) on the surface of a benchmark hydrofoil and analyzed the effects of this passive controller on the dynamics of the unsteady cloud cavitation. First we modeled the unsteady cavitating flow around the hydrofoil without CCGs using a hybrid URANS model which was implemented in an open source code. Next, we studied the effect of CCGs on the mechanism of the unsteady cloud cavitation. The results show that using this method, the unsteady cavity structure was changed to a quasi-stable cavity structure compared with the cloud cavity shedding in the case without CCGs. We observed that the instability behavior of the unsteady cloud cavitation was mitigated and only small-scale cavity may be shedded from the hydrofoil in the free stream flow away from the hydrofoil surface. A notable reduction in cavitation-induced vibration and high wall-pressure peaks on the solid surface was observed.