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An experimental study on the impact behavior of cavitation inside tip clearance of a hydrofoil

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Abstract

Tip clearance cavitation is one of the most common cavitation phenomena exist on duct propellers, pumps and some hydraulic turbines, which may lead to erosion of the components. Due to the influence of the nearby wall, cavitation inside the tip clearance is more complicated than other cases without interaction. So far, the understanding about the impact mechanism of tip clearance cavitation is still limited. In this paper, to obtain the impact behavior of tip clearance cavitation, a high-speed camera was used to capture the cavitation behavior inside the tip clearance of a hydrofoil, and surface paint coating peeling method was applied to show the impact region. Results indicated that cavitation around the tip of the hydrofoil was composed of a tip separation cavity and a tip leakage vortex cavity, and the one with contribution to impact was the tip separation cavity. Through the comprehensive analysis of the paint peeling region and dynamic behavior of tip separation cavity, the impact was found to be related to the local collapse and rebound of the cloud cavitation shed from the attached part. In addition, the influence of tip clearance size on the behavior of tip clearance cavitation was also investigated. As the tip clearance size increased, the tip separation cavity tended to transfer from sheet cavitation to vortex cavitation. These findings can provide a sound basis for evaluating the erosion risk arising from the tip clearance cavitation.

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Acknowledgement

(This research received other funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Key Laboratory on Ship Vibration and Noise, China Ship Scientific Research Center, Wuxi, 214082, China

    Yan-tao Cao, Liang-hao Xu & Xiao-xing Peng

  2. Taihu Laboratory of Deepsea Technological Science, Wuxi, 214082, China

    Yan-tao Cao, Liang-hao Xu & Xiao-xing Peng

Authors
  1. Yan-tao Cao
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  2. Liang-hao Xu
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  3. Xiao-xing Peng
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yan-tao Cao.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Xiao-xing Peng is editorial board member for the Journal of Hydrodynamics and was not involved in the editorial review, or the decision to publish this article. All authors declare that there are no other competing interests.

Ethical approval: This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Informed consent: Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Additional information

Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11902295).

Biography: Yan-tao Cao (1987-), Male, Ph. D. Candidate, Senior Engineering

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Cao, Yt., Xu, Lh. & Peng, Xx. An experimental study on the impact behavior of cavitation inside tip clearance of a hydrofoil. J Hydrodyn 35, 1208–1214 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42241-024-0078-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42241-024-0078-7

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