Hydrofoil Cavitation Under Strong Thermodynamic Effect

Abstract

Cavitation was studied for a NACA0015 hydrofoil using a material that simulates cryogenic behavior. Several angles of attack and flow speeds up to 8.6m∕s were tested. The material used, 2-trifluoromethyl-1,1,1,2,4,4,5,5,5-nonafluoro-3-pentanone, hereafter referred to as fluoroketone, exhibits a strong thermodynamic effect even under ambient conditions. Static pressures were measured at seven chordwise locations along the centerline of the hydrofoil suction side and on the test section wall immediately upstream of the hydrofoil. Frequency analysis of the test section static pressure showed that the amplitude of the oscillations increased as the tunnel speed increased. A gradual transition corresponding to the Type II-I sheet cavitation transition observed in water was found to occur near σ∕2α=5 with Strouhal numbers based on chord dropping from 0.5 to 0.1 as the cavitation number was reduced. Flash-exposure high-speed imaging showed the cavity covering a larger portion of the chord for a given cavitation number than in cold water. The bubbles appeared significantly smaller in the current study and the pressure data showed increasing rather than constant static pressure in the downstream direction in the cavitating region, in line with observations made in literature for other geometries with fluids exhibiting strong thermodynamic effect.