Abstract:The objective of this paper is to investigate the unsteady characteristics of liquid nitrogen cavitating flow in a converging-diverging (C-D) nozzle via a cryogenic experimental facility. A high-speed camera with high resolution was employed to study the evolution of cavity with varying cavitation numbers σunder T _throat≈ 77 K. In order to quantitatively analyze the unsteady characteristics and temporal-spatial evolution, processed data such as the length and area of cavitation based on experimental images were obtained. The results show that: (1) As the cavitation number decreases and under similar free-stream velocity and temperature, the liquid nitrogen cavitation shows four typical flow patterns, with the cavitation length within 2.5 hfor incipient cavitation, between 2.5 hand 7.5 hfor sheet cavitation, between 7.5 hand 15 hfor large-scale cloud cavitation, and over 15 hfor double-cloud cavitation, Additionally, a significant phenomenon of re-entrant jet is captured in the large-scale cloud cavitation and double-cloud cavitation; (2) as the liquid nitrogen cavitating flow evolves from incipient cavitation to double-cloud cavitation, the scale of shedding cavity increases gradually, meanwhile, the amplitude and quasi-period of cavity area pulsation is getting longer. In addition, it is observed that the blockage effect on the cavitation flow at the throat is significantly enhanced in the large-scale cloud cavitation and double-cloud cavitation; (3) compared with incipient cavitation, the travel distance of shedding cavities increases by 0.97, 2.65 and 2.68 times in sheet cavitation, large-scale cloud cavitation and double-cloud cavitation, and the collapse time increases by 1.18, 3.59 and 4.47 times, respectively. For the double-cloud cavitation, there are two significantly different evolutions of shedding cavity.