Experimental Study on Cavitating Flows Around an Axisymmetric Body with a Cavitator

To impulse the application of supercavitation in the field of underwater weapon drag-reduction, the characteristics of cavitating flows around axisymmetric body which was with a cavitator were addressed by means of experimental methods. Cavity shapes around the body were obtained by means of a high-speed video camera in different cavitation numbers, and the time-averaged velocity and vorticity distributions were obtained by means of a particle image velocimetry (PIV) system. The results show that the high-fluctuating region with lower velocity corresponds to the cavitating area; the velocity in this area is much lower than main stream area. At the cloud cavitation stage, the large vortices become more dispersed.