Investigation of the effect of cavitation passive control on the dynamics of unsteady cloud cavitation

We present an efficient method to control the evolution of unsteady cloud cavitation around the CAV2003 benchmark hydrofoil using passive cavitation controllers so called cavitation-bubble generators (CGs). Cavitation control may be used in many engineering applications, particularly in the marine and turbo machinery field. We first simulated the unsteady cavitating flow around the hydrofoil without CGs using a Partially-averaged Navier-Stokes (PANS) method, and validated the acquired results against experimental data. We coupled the turbulence model with a mass transfer model and successfully implemented it in the open source toolbox OpenFOAM. Next, we studied the effect of different CGs on the qualitative parameters, such as the cavitation structure and the cavity shape. We varied size and location of the CGs to find the proper control of the cloud cavitation. We also analyzed in detail the effect of CGs on various destructive mechanisms of cavitation, such as highly unsteady cloud cavitation, turbulent velocity fluctuations, wall-pressure peaks, and degrading hydrodynamic performances. Our results revealed that CGs can substantially reduce instantaneous high-pressure pulsations on the hydrofoil surface. We observed that the cyclic behavior of unsteady cloud cavitation was suppressed, and the hydrodynamic efficiency of the hydrofoil was increased. The local boundary layer on the hydrofoil surface was altered, and the turbulent velocity fluctuation was reduced significantly, confirming that the vortex structures on the suction side and the wake region of the hydrofoil were changed remarkably.