Cavitation in the rotational structures of a turbulent wake

Abstract

Experiments show that cavitation, if moderately developed, makes three kinds of vortical coherent structures visible inside the turbulent wake of a two-dimensional obstacle: Bénard–Kármán vortices, streamwise three-dimensional vortices and finally the vortices which appear on the borders of the very near wake. The latter, which are called here near-wake vortices, result by successive pairing in the first ones and there is some indication that they are also the origin of streamwise vortices. Cavitation is not a passive agent of visualization, as can be established on the basis of fundamental arguments, and it reacts with the flow as soon as it appears; when it is developed, it breaks the connection between the elongation rate and the vorticity rate of the vortex filaments. Then the subsequent evolution of a cavitating vortex and its final implosion are rather complicated. Despite its active character, cavitation in rotational structures, if properly interpreted, can give information of interest on the basic non-cavitating turbulent flow. By adapting a simple model due to Kermeen & Parkin (1957) and Arndt (1976), and counting near-wake vortices, it is possible to accurately predict the conditions of cavitation inception: consideration of coherent rotational structures is probably the best approach to explain, in an almost deterministic way, the large difference between the absolute value of the mean pressure coefficient at the obstacle base and the incipient cavitation number.