Experimental Study on Artificial Supercavitation of the High Speed Torpedo

Recently supercavitating underwater torpedo moving at high speed (over 200 knots) has been interested for their practical advantage of the dramatic drag reduction. Cavitator located in front of the torpedo plays an important role to generate a natural supercavity and control the motion of the object. Supercavity can be created artificially by injection of compressed gas from the rear of the cavitator at a relatively low speed. In this paper, we investigated physical characteristics of artificial supercavities through cavitation tunnel experiments. One of the main focuses of the study was to measure pressure inside the cavity, and examined variation of the gravity effects appearing according to different amount of injected air. It was also found that a stable supercavity could be sustained at injection rates less than that required to form the stable supercavity because of hysteresis effect.