Experimental Study on Cavitation Motion of Underwater Vehicle With Protrusions

Abstract

For underwater vehicles with protrusions (external structure), the geometric shape of the protrusions is bound to affect the local flow field of the vehicles during the moving process of the vehicles, thus affecting the generation, development and collapse of cavitation around the vehicles. The cavitation may break, fall off and collapse randomly, and other local movements may affect the motion attitude of the underwater vehicle. It is an effective method to study fluid dynamics to simulate prototype cases with small scale models. In this paper, we mainly use the small scale model test method to explore the cavitation motion characteristics of the vehicle in water with protrusions. Through the establishment of a set of vehicle motion test equipment under reduced pressure, a series of experiments were conducted on this basis to explore the motion characteristics of vehicle cavitation under different bump shapes. In this study, two high-speed cameras were used to simultaneously record cavitation generation, development, collapse and other characteristics, to analyze the bubble generation mechanism and scale characteristics caused by the bulge, and then to study the influence of cavitation induced by the bulge on the motion attitude of the vehicle.