Numerical study of the effects of ventilation rates on supercavity dynamics and acoustic characteristics

This paper presents a numerical simulation investigation of the hydrodynamic and acoustic characteristics of ventilated supercavities that operate at various ventilation rates. The large eddy simulation (LES) and Ffowcs Williams–Hawkings (FW-H) methods are used to solve the unsteady flow field and noise. The results show that the ventilation rate plays an important role in cavity closure forms and can improve hydrodynamic performance. There is a transition from re-entrant flow closure to a stable double-vortex tube closure form at the supercavity tail as the ventilation rate increases. Meanwhile, under the condition of a high ventilation rate, the re-entrant flow region in the cavity gradually shrinks and hairpin vortices appear, the body length of the cavity increases,and the unsteadiness at the supercavity tail is weakened. However, the turbulence intensity and integral scale both increase with the ventilation rate. Moreover, it is found that the noise is closely related to supercavity closure form. Ventilated supercavities with closure forms of double-vortex tubes have better noise performance. Interestingly, as the ventilation rate increases, the total sound pressure levels are improved. The wavenumber-frequency spectra of supercavity turbulent pulsating pressures under studied ventilation rates are similar, but there are some differences in some local areas. •The effects of ventilation rates on the closure forms of cavity tail are investigated.•The evolution of vortex structure in ventilated cavitation flow is analyzed.•The supercavity noise, turbulence intensity and wavenumber-frequency spectrum are evaluated.