Bubble-induced sheet cavitation inception on an isolated roughness element

Abstract

The nucleation process on an isolated roughness element, located at the point of minimum pressure of a NACA 0015 hydrofoil was studied experimentally and computationally. The objective of this study was to investigate the working mechanism of bubble-induced sheet cavitation inception. High-speed micro-scale observations show the generation of a streak of cavitation - attached to the roughness element - in the wake of the bubble. Below its critical diameter, the bubble can detach from the streak cavity and travel on while the streak cavity remains. The solutions of a Rayleigh-Plesset equation along a streamline extracted from a RANS calculation show strong similarities with the experimental observations, but a factor 5 to 10 higher frame rate is needed to validate the calculations.