Experimental Study on Motion Characteristics of Cavity Attached to the Tail of Underwater Vehicle

Abstract

The formation and development of an attached cavity at the tail of an underwater moving vehicle involves a complex multiphase flow, which determines the load characteristics and motion stability of the vehicle. In this study, an experimental method was used to explore the formation process and motion characteristics of the cavity at the tail of the vehicle, and a pressure sensor installed at the tail of the model was used to establish the relationship between the evolution of the tail attachment cavity and transient pressure. The study found that the process of pulling and breaking the attached cavity was accompanied by the generation of bidirectional jets, and reducing the cavitation number could weaken the occurrence of jet impact. When the ventilation flow reaches the critical value Q¯in = 1.28, the cavity pulsates. In addition, increasing the ventilation flow does not increase the size of the tail cavity, and the length of the cavity at the closure increases with the decrease of the cavitation number.

Keywords

• underwater vehicle
• tail attachment cavity
• pressure characteristics
• entrainment mechanism