This paper describes a study of the response of a recently developed low-drag partially cavitating hydrofoil (denoted as OK-2003) to periodical perturbations of incoming flow. A two-flap assembly specially designed to simulate sea wave impact on the cavitating hydrofoil generates the perturbations. The design range of cavitation number was maintained by ventilation. Unsteady flow can be simulated over a range of ratios of gust flow wavelength to cavity length. The measurement of time-average lift and drag coefficients and their fluctuating values over a range of inflow characteristics allows a determination of hydrofoil performance over a range of conditions that could be expected for a prototype hydrofoil. Both regular interaction with practically linear perturbations and resonancelike singular interaction with substantial nonlinear effects were noted. The observations are accompanied by a numerical analysis that identifies resonance phenomena as a function of excitation frequency.
Partial cavitation reduces hydrofoil friction, but a drag penalty associated with unsteady cavity dynamics usually occurs. With the aid of inviscid theory a design procedure is developed to suppress cavity oscillations. It is demonstrated that it is possible to suppress these oscillations in some range of lift coefficient and cavitation number. A candidate hydrofoil, denoted as OK-2003, was designed by modification of the suction side of a conventional NACA-0015 hydrofoil to provide stable drag reduction by partial cavitation. Validation of the design concept with water tunnel experiments has shown that the partial cavitation on the suction side of the hydrofoil OK-2003 does lead to drag reduction and a significant increase in the lift to drag ratio within a certain range of cavitation number and within a three-degree range of angle of attack. Within this operating regime, fluctuations of lift and drag decrease down to levels inherent to cavitation-free flow. The favorable characteristics of the OK-2003 are compared with the characteristics of the NACA-0015 under cavitating conditions.
Partial cavitation reduces hydrofoil wetted area and friction, but usually with a significant drag penalty associated with unsteady cavity dynamics. A design concept for a high-performance partially cavitating hydrofoil that centers on the suppression of these oscillations by tuning the local pressure gradient in the region of cavity closure is described. The design algorithm is based on ideal fluid theory. An example of this design is the OK-2003 hydrofoil, which is derived from the NACA-0015 geometry. The concept is verified through water tunnel experiments. It is found that under partial cavitation, a two-dimensional hydrofoil exhibits up to a 100% increase in the lift-to-drag ratio compared to its noncavitating conditions. The substantial increase in this ratio relative to the ratio exhibited by the initial NACA-0015 hydrofoil remains significant within a 3 deg range of angle of attack and under a variation of cavitation number of about ±0.2. It was also found that this new hydrofoil design reduces hydrodynamic force pulsations under partially cavitating conditions to operational levels typical of noncavitating flow. In order to further verify the design benefits, the effects of cross flow have been studied with a swept hydrofoil of the same cross section. It was found that outstanding performance of the designed cavitating hydrofoil is retained with 15 deg sweep.
The theory of cavitation in an ideal fluid is utilized to design hydrofoils that have a significant increase of lift to drag ratio for a regime of partially cavitating flows. Our recently reported experiments with natural cavitation have confirmed the existence of such an increase within a certain range of cavitation number and angle of attack for the specially designed hydrofoil designated as OK-2003. For applications of such a design to engineering, it would be necessary to keep the cavitation number within this favorable range and ventilation looks to be the most promising tool for control of cavitating flows. Therefore, comparative water tunnel tests have been carried out for both natural and ventilated cavitation of the OK-2003. The general similarity between the two kinds of partial cavitation for the developed low-drag hydrofoil is proven. When validating theory with the aid of water tunnel experiments, a general issue of how to make a comparison between natural cavitation and ventilated cavitation was encountered. This issue is the difficulty to determine the pressure within partial cavities. During natural cavitation the cavity pressure can deviate from vapor pressure due to the effects of dissolved gas and possibly other water quality effects. Direct pressure measurements within the partial cavity have proved to be unstable due to the unsteadiness of the cavity. The unsteadiness effect becomes more dominant as cavitation number is increased and the cavity becomes smaller. There is a point where the measured cavity pressure becomes unusable. In the case of ventilated cavitation, the interaction of the airflow with the surface of relatively thin cavities can be significant. Finally, it was experimentally determined that different dynamics of cavity pulsation are inherent to natural and ventilated cavitation.
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