Abstract:
Ventilated cavitating flow around an axisymmetric body involves coupled multi-parameter interactions with high experimental costs. A Gaussian process-based sequential sampling method was established to optimize experimental design and ensure the quality of the dataset while reducing the sample size. The effects of Froude number (
Fr) and ventilation coefficient (
CQ) on cavity characteristics were investigated. In circulating water tunnel experiments, high-speed photography was used to capture cavity morphology under ventilation rates (5~85 L/min) and velocities (4~10 m/s). The results indicate that both increased
CQ and decreased
Fr elongate cavities and modify their shapes, causing transitions from foam-like to re-entrant jet patterns with nonlinear coupling. The sequential sampling method dynamically adjusted the sample distribution, achieving <5% prediction error with Gaussian process modeling, and outperformed static sampling in data efficiency. Additionally, a cavity length distribution model was developed to classify characteristic variations across length types. The findings offer a practical approach for optimizing ventilated cavitation in engineering applications and serve as a reference for designing simulation experiments for nonlinear and complex flow in future research.