Modeling of 2-D leakage jet cavitation as a basic study of tip leakage vortex cavitation

As the first step of the study of cavitation in the tip leakage flow in turbomachinery, experimental and numerical investigations on characteristics of 2-D leakage jet cavitation are conducted. The experiments using 2-D model apparatus are carried out for three values of initial pressure and for three values of tip clearance. The numerical methods are constructed by combining the vortex method with three types of cavity models. Through the comparisons with the experiments, it is found that one of the models, which takes account of the effects of cavity behavior on the ambient flow, simulate the location and the size of the cavity fairly well in spite of its simplicity.