An Experimental Investigation of Cavitation Inception and Development of Partial Sheet Cavities on Two-Dimensional Hydrofoils

The main results of an experimental study concerning the inception and the development of partial sheet cavities on four two-dimensional hydrofoils are presented. The conditions of cavitation inception are measured together with the minimum pressure coefficient in some cases. The effect of the Reynolds number is studied. Concerning cavitation development, depending on the cavitation number or the angle of incidence various types of cavitation are observed as partial sheet cavities, bubble, fingers, patches or super cavitation patterns. For partial sheet cavities, the cavity lengths were measured on the foils for various conditions of cavitation number and angle of incidence. An attempt to correlate the cavity length data is studied at the end of the paper.