Assessment of Cavitating Flow Aggressiveness on a Hydrofoil: Experimental and Numerical Approaches

The aggressiveness of a partial cavity on a hydrofoil in a cavitation tunnel is investigated from a joint numerical and experimental analysis. The numerical approach is based on a homogeneous equilibrium model and a barotropic law for the liquid/vapor mixture [1, 2] for cold water. The unsteady behavior of the cavity appears in good agreement with experiments although the maximum cavity length is underestimated and the cloud shedding frequency overestimated. The flow aggressiveness is estimated by using the energy approach proposed by Fortes-Patella et al. [3, 4]. The technique predicts a maximum in flow aggressiveness located in the region where the cloud cavity is shed and increases as a power of the flow velocity between 2 and 3.