Cavitation Control using Mesoscale Surface Structuring in Marine Engineering and Hydraulic Systems

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Bettar Ould El Moctar
• Subject Area: Fluid Mechanics
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 469042952

The main objective of this project is to develop passive cavitation control methods for different types of cavitation and to mitigate their undesirable effects on hydrofoils. With this end in view, we intend to implement mesoscale (of the order of or less than a millimeter) regular or irregular wall structuring. Various surface textures will be produced using appropriate processing technologies (milling, deformational cutting, detonation or plasma spraying). Several bodies, including, benchmark hydrofoils and laboratory prototypes (scaled-down models) of propellers and hydrofoils, with diverse surface morphologies will be tested in separate cavitation tunnels employing modern panoramic techniques for two-phase flow diagnostics with high temporal and spatial resolutions. The experiments will be performed for a wide range of flow regimes on the angle of attack, cavitation number and Reynolds numbers and accompanied by numerical simulations based on PANS approaches for the same flow conditions (model scale) as well as for full-scale. Based on the numerical and experimental results, the effects of such wall structuring on the inception and evolution of different types of hydrodynamic cavitation and the associated flow turbulence structures will be investigated in detail.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Russia
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dimitry Markovich, Ph.D.