Numerical study of water entry supercavitating flow around a vertical circular cylinder influenced by turbulent drag-reducing additives

This paper attempts to introduce a numerical simulation procedure to simulate water-entry problems influenced by turbulent drag-reducing additives in a viscous incompressible medium. Firstly we performed a numerical investigation on water-entry supercavities in water and turbulent drag-reducing solution at the impact velocity of 28.4 m/s to confirm the accuracy of the numerical method. Based on the verification, projectile entering water and turbulent drag-reducing solution at relatively high velocity of 142.7 m/s (phase transition is considered) is simulated. The cross viscosity equation was adopted to represent the shear-thinning characteristic of aqueous solution of drag-reducing additives. The configuration and dynamic characteristics of water entry supercavity, flow resistance were discussed respectively. It was obtained that the numerical simulation results are in consistence with experimental data. Numerical results show that the supercavity length in drag-reducing solution is larger than one in water and the velocity attenuates faster at high velocity than at low velocity; the influence of drag-reducing solution is more obvious at high impact velocity. Turbulent drag-reducing additives have the great potential for enhancement of supercavity.