Computational Study of Unsteady Cavitating Flow on 3D NACA4412 Hydrofoil

Abstract

This research focuses on the performance of the 3D unsteady cavitating flow over NACA4412 hydrofoil at angle of attack 4 0 in the range of supercavitation to non-cavitation zone. The range of cavitation numbers considered from 0.3 to 1.1. The simulation has been carried out in commercial software ANSYS Fluent. Zwart Gerber-Belamri (ZGB) cavitation model along with Realizable 𝜅 − 𝜖 turbulence model has been utilised for the computation. To analyse the hydrodynamic performance, the lift coefficient, drag coefficient, coefficient of pressure, Strouhal number is computed at various cavitation numbers. It has been found that hydrodynamic performance parameters of hydrofoil are associated with cavitating conditions. For angle of attack 4 0 moving from supercavitation zone (𝜎 = 0.3) to non-cavitation zone (𝜎 = 1.1), the lift coefficient nonlinearly grows (from 0.2 to 0.8) and cavitation length reduces.