Dynamics of cavity structures and wall-pressure fluctuations associated with shedding mechanism in unsteady sheet/cloud cavitating flows

Abstract The physics and mechanism of sheet/cloud cavitation in a convergent–divergent channel are investigated using synchronized dynamic surface pressure measurement and high-speed imaging in a water tunnel to probe the cavity shedding mechanism. Experiments are conducted at a fixed Reynolds number of Re = 7.8 × 105 for different values of the cavitation number σ between 1.20 and 0.65, ranging from intermittent inception cavitation, sheet cavitation to quasi-periodic cloud cavitation. Two distinct cloud cavitation regimes, i.e. the re-entrant jet and shockwave shedding mechanism, are observed, accompanied by complex flow phenomenon and dynamics, and are examined in detail. An increase in pressure fluctuation intensity at the numbers 3 and 4 transducer locations are captured during the transition from re-entrant jet to shockwave shedding mechanism. The spectral content analysis shows that, in cloud cavitation, several frequency peaks are identified with the dominant frequency caused by the large-scale cavity shedding process and the secondary frequency related to re-entrant jet/shockwave dynamics. Statistical analysis based on defined grey level profiles reveals that, in cloud cavitation, the double-peak behaviours of the probability density functions with negative skewness values are found to be owing to the interactions of the re-entrant jet/shockwave with cavities in the region of 0.25 ~ 0.65 mean cavity length (Lc). In addition, multi-scale proper orthogonal decomposition analysis with an emphasis on the flow structures in the region of 0.25 ~ 0.65 Lc reveals that, under the shockwave shedding mechanism, both the re-entrant jet and shockwave are captured and their interactions are responsible for the dynamics and statistics of cloud shedding process.