Author(s)

Shota Hayashi, Keiichi Sato

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kanazawa Institute of Technology, Nonoichi, Japan.

Although it is well known that cloud cavitation shows unsteady behavior with the growing motion of an attached cavity, the shedding motion of a cloud, the collapsing motion of the cloud shed downstream and a reentrant motion in flow fields such as on a 2-D hydrofoil and in a convergent- divergent channel with a rectangular cross-section, observations for the periodic behavior of cloud cavitation in a cylindrical nozzle with a convergent-divergent part, which is mainly used in an industrial field, have hardly been conducted. From engineering viewpoints, it is important to elucidate the mechanism of periodic cavitation behavior in a cylindrical nozzle. In this study, a high-speed observation technique with an image analysis technique was applied to the cloud cavitation behavior in the nozzle to make clear the mechanism of unsteady behavior. As a result, it was observed in the nozzle that the periodic behavior occurs in the cloud cavitation and pressure waves form at the collapse of clouds shed downstream. Also, it was found through the image analysis based on the present technique that the pressure wave plays a role as a trigger mechanism to cause a reentrant motion at the downstream end of an attached cavity.

Cloud Cavitation, Cylindrical Convergent-Divergent Nozzle, High Speed Observation, Image Analysis

Hayashi, S. and Sato, K. (2014) Unsteady Behavior of Cavitating Waterjet in an Axisymmetric Convergent-Divergent Nozzle: High Speed Observation and Image Analysis Based on Frame Difference Method. Journal of Flow Control, Measurement & Visualization, 2, 94-104. doi: 10.4236/jfcmv.2014.23011.