Numerical study of gas rate coefficient effect on ventilated supercavitating flow specifications

In this paper, the three dimensional ventilated cavitating flow in the steady condition around a projectile model is simulated using CFD method combined with a sst k-ω turbulence model and volume-of-fluid technique, With the aid of CFD software ANSYS CFX. The numerical model is validated using comparisons between numerical predictions and existing experimental data and fairly good agreement is revealed. The numerical results show that with increasing the ventilation gas rate at constant Froude number, the cavity length gradually increases to a critical value and then remains fixed upon further increase in gas ventilation rate. Also, it has been observed that rear portion of larger cavity moves upwards due to gravitational effect. With increasing the ventilation gas rate, the gas leakage mechanism at rear portion of ventilated supercavity changes from the re-entrant jet closure mode to twin vortex closure mode. The variation of ventilation gas rate versus cavity length is a function of Froude number and the critical ventilation gas rate increases linearly with Froude number.