Experimental and numerical analysis of cavitating flow around a hydrofoil

The paper describes experiments carried out in the cavitation tunnel with the rectangular test section of 150 × 150 × 500 mm and the maximum test section inlet velocity of 25 m/s. These experiments have been aimed to visualize the cavitation phenomena as well as to quantify the erosion potential using pitting tests evaluated during the incubation period for the cast-iron prismatic hydrofoil with the modified NACA profile. A bypass section installed in the tunnel has allowed to measure the nuclei content in the inlet flow to the test section using the acoustic spectrometer. The measured data have been compared with the CFD analysis of the cavitation phenomena on the hydrofoil as well as the numerically determined location and magnitude of the first calculated collapses of the cavitating bubbles with a good agreement.