In many cavitating liquid flows, when the number and
concentration of the bubbles exceeds some critical level, the
flow becomes unsteady and large clouds of cavitating bubbles
are periodically formed and then collapse when convected into
regions of higher pressure. This phenomenon is known as
cloud cavitation and when it occurs it is almost always
associated with a substantial increase in the cavitation noise
and damage.
These increases represent serious problems in devices as
disparate as marine propellers, cavitating pumps and artificial
heart valves. This lecture will present a brief review of the
analyses of cloud cavitation in simplified geometries that
allow us to anticipate the behavior of clouds of cavitation
bubbles and the parameters that influence that behaviour.
These simpler geometries allow some anticipation of the role
of cloud cavitation in more complicated flows such as those in
cavitating pumps
