Nowadays,most researchers focus on the cavity shedding mechanisms of unsteady cavitating flows over different objects,such as 2D/3D hydrofoils,venturi-type section,axisymmetric bodies with different headforms,and so on.But few of them pay attention to the differences of cavity shedding modality under different cavitation numbers in unsteady cavitating flows over the same object.In the present study,two kinds of shedding patterns are investigated experimentally.A high speed camera system is used to observe the cavitating flows over an axisymmetric blunt body and the velocity fields are measured by a particle image velocimetry(PIV)technique in a water tunnel for different cavitation conditions.The U-type cavitating vortex shedding is observed in unsteady cavitating flows.When the cavitation number is 0.7,there is a large scale cavity rolling up and shedding,which cause the instability and dramatic fluctuation of the flows,while at cavitation number of 0.6,the detached cavities can be conjunct with the attached part to induce the break-off behavior again at the tail of the attached cavity,as a result,the final shedding is in the form of small scale cavity and keeps a relatively steady flow field.It is also found that the interaction between the re-entrant flow and the attached cavity plays an important role in the unsteady cavity shedding modality.When the attached cavity scale is insufficient to overcome the re-entrant flow,it deserves the large cavity rolling up and shedding just as that at cavitation number of 0.7.Otherwise,the re-entrant flow is defeated by large enough cavity to induce the cavity-combined process and small scale cavity vortexes shedding just as that of the cavitation number of0.6.This research shows the details of two different cavity shedding modalities which is worthful and meaningful for the further study of unsteady cavitation.
