Study on tip leakage vortex cavitating flows using a visualization method

Experimental investigations of unsteady cavitating flows in a hydrofoil tip leakage region with different gap sizes are conducted to highlight the development of gap cavitation. The experiments were taken in a closed cavitation tunnel, during which high-speed camera had been used to capture the cavitation patterns. A new visualization method based on image processing was developed to capture time-dependent cavitation patterns. The results show that the visualization method can effectively capture the cavitation patterns in the tip region, including both the attached cavity in the gap and the tip leakage vortex (TLV) cavity near the trailing edge. Moreover, with the decrease of cavitation number, the TLV cavity develops from a rapid onset-growth-collapse process to a continuous process, and extends both upstream and downstream. The attached cavity in the gap develops gradually stretching beyond the gap and combines with the vortex cavity to form the triangle cavitating region. Furthermore, the influences of gap size on the cavitation are also discussed. The gap size has a great influence on the loss across the gap, and hence the locations of the inception attached cavity. Besides, inception locations and extending direction of the TLV cavity with different gap sizes also differ. The TLV in the case with tau = 0.061 is more likely to be jet-like compared with that in the case with tau = 0.024, and the gap size has a great influence on the TLV strength.