LAUSR

Abstract The objective of this paper is mainly to investigate the ventilated cavitating flow around an axisymmetric body with a focus on the gas leakage mechanisms via combining experimental and numerical methods. A high-speed camera technique is used to record the ventilated cavitating flow patterns. The numerical simulation is performed with a free surface model and Filter-based turbulence model (FBM). Good agreement can be obtained between the experimental and numerical results. In the formation of a ventilated cavity, there are three typical gas leakage types with different Froude numbers Fr and gas entrainment coefficients CQ, including RJ closure mode with gas leakage of toroidal vortex shedding (TVS-RJ), TV closure mode with gas leakage of twin-vortex tube entrainment (TVTE-TV), and the coexistence of toroidal vortex shedding and twin-vortex tube entrainment (TVS-TVTE). The internal flow characteristics revealed three distinct regions with the ventilated cavity, including the ventilation influence region, the internal shear layer and the reverse flow region. With the increase of CQ, the incline angle of the cavity bottom surface α gradually decreases. When the incline angle α decrease to a critical value of ∼17.1°, the flow separation disappears completely and the flow regime migrates completely to TV cavity from RJ cavity.