CFD based shape optimization of axisymmetric cavitators in supercavitating flows

Abstract.Supercavitation is a hydrodynamic behavior, which leads to a drastic reduction in hydrodynamic drag by
allowing the bodies to travel inside a self-generated bubble of water vapor or gas. The world’s major navies are
developing entire arsenals of totally new high-speed underwater weapons based on the physical phenomenon of
supercavitation. This research concentrates the shape of the cavitator optimization by means of numerical investigation.
The shapes of the axisymmetric cavitators like disc, hemispherical, conical and edged double conical were consideredwith the same diameter. The modeling and CFD analysis were conducted in ANSYS Fluent 16.0. The RNG K-epsilonturbulence model used to evaluate the performance of various shapes of the axisymmetric cavitators. The Contours ofDensity (Mixture), the Contours of Volume Fraction (Water) and the Contours of Volume Fraction (Vapor) considered
for comparison and resulted length of supercavity is used to optimize the shape.