Bubble-induced sheet cavitation inception on an isolated roughness element

The nucleation process on an isolated roughness element, located at the point of minimum pressure of a NACA 0015 hydrofoil was studied experimentally and computationally. The objective of this study was to investigate the working mechanism of bubble-induced sheet cavitation inception. High-speed micro-scale observations show the generation of a streak of cavitation—attached to the roughness element—in the wake of the bubble. Below its critical diameter, the bubble can detach from the streak cavity and travel on while the streak cavity remains. The solutions of a Rayleigh-Plesset equation along a streamline extracted from a RANS calculation show strong similarities with the experimental observations, but a factor 5 to 10 higher frame rate is needed to validate the calculations.