Suppression of Sheet Cavitation Inception by Water Discharge Through Slit

Abstract

This paper studies experimentally the suppression effect of water discharge on incipient and developed sheet cavitation on a hemispherical headform. The water is discharged tangentially from a slit upstream of a cavitating region into the boundary layer on the headform. Increasing the discharge rate, the length of the sheet cavity becomes shorter and then the cavity is suppressed completely. Flow visualization test shows the generation of wavy motion in the boundary layer which disturbs the separated zone, resulting in disappearance of the sheet cavitation.