EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH ON THE EFFECT OF MODEL STRUCTURE ON VENTILATED SUPERCAVITY

A series of model experiments in water tunnel were carried out to investigate the effect of model structure on the shape and hydrodynamic characteristics of ventilated supercavity. It is shown that the characteristics of ventilated supercavity are affected by many factors, such as: cavitator, gas deflector, main-body combining cone with cylinder, contractive rear-body, section shape of the strut and its connection type. Consequently, the conclusions are drawn as: 1) If the number of cavitation remains unchanged, the length of supercavity increases with the cavitator diameter. 2) With equal diameters, disc cavitator can produce longer supercavity than cone cavitator, and both the choke ratio and the supercavity length increase with the model scale. 3) Hysteresis effect may happen on the main-body. 4) Strut section should be in the shape of streamline. 5) Different supercavity characteristics should be analyzed using different strut types. 6) If front-strut type is used, supercavity shape and hydrodynamics should be calculated with effective cavitator diameter.