Cavitation Event Rates and Nuclei Distributions

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between the cavitation event rates on axisymmetric headforms and the nuclei distributions in the incident flow. An analytical model is developed to relate these quantities and the results are compared with experimental cavitation event rates measured in the Large Cavitation Channel (LCC) at David Taylor Research Center (DTRC) on three different sizes of Schiebe body. The experiments were carried out at various cavitation numbers, tunnel velocities and air contents. Boundary layer, bubble screening and observable cavitation bubble size effects on the event rates are examined. The trends in the event rates with changing cavitation number and body size are consistent with those observed experimentally. However the magnitudes of the event rates are about an order of magnitude larger than the experimental data. Nevertheless it is shown that the cavitation inception values predicted using a certain critical event rate are consistent with those observed experimentally.