Physical and numerical investigation of cavitating flow-induced vibration of a flexible hydrofoil

The objective of this paper is to investigate the flow-induced vibration of a flexible hydrofoil in cavitating flows via combined experimental and numerical studies. The experiments are presented for the modified NACA66 hydrofoil made of POM Polyacetate in the closed-loop cavitation tunnel and the numerical investigations are performed using a hybrid coupled fluid structure interaction model. The results showed that with the decreasing of cavitation number, the vibration magnitude increases dramatically for the cloud cavitation and declines for the supercavitation. The cloud cavitation development strongly affects the vibration response, with the main frequency of the vibration being accordance with the cavity shedding frequency and other two frequencies corresponding to the bending and twisting frequencies.