The shedding dynamics of unsteady cavitating flows around two different axisymmetric bodies

The unsteady cavitating flows around axisymmetric bodies with different scales of separation vortex are investigated based on experiments and numerical simulations. Compared with the experimental results, the numerical method can well predict the time-evolution process of unsteady cavitating flows. The details of cavity evolution process can vary with cavitation numbers as well as the headforms, especially for the shedding pattern which can be divided into two categories in this work. One shows large scale of cavity rolling up and shedding, and the other presents the conjunct process of different partial cavity and final shedding in form of small scale. Meanwhile, it is found that the former shedding pattern causes more productions of vorticity and turbulent fluctuations than the latter. Moreover, compared with that of conical headform, the unsteady cavitating flows around the blunt headform always presents larger scale of cavity and higher levels of turbulent fluctuations as well as vorticity distributions.