The objective of this paper is to investigate the cavity stability around an under-water vehicle in the water flow. The water tunnel experiment for the cavity around the vehicle was investigated. The experiment was carried out to study cavity developing

break-off and shedding with different cavitation number. The experiment also studied the velocity of shedding cavity and the pressure of the vehicle surface. The mechanism of gas control and cavitation stability was obtained. The results show that the transparent cavity increases gradually with ventilation. Re-entrant jet appears and moves back to the front of the vehicle under adverse pressure gradient at the closure of the cavity. The transparent cavity in front of it is replaced by opaque one gradually at the same time. The shedding cavity rolls up and large cavity vortexes sheds toward downstream. When the re-entrant jet arrives at the forepart of the vehicle

the cavity boundaries become wavy. The characteristics of cavity developing and shedding vary as cavitation number is changed. When the cavitation number is bigger

it is found that the shedding generally contains two processes: cavity break-off and cavity shedding. With the decrease in the cavitation number

the shedding contains three processes: cavity break-off

conjunction and cavity shedding. The average shedding speeds decrease with the decreasing of the cavitation number. The experimental results also show that the pressure signals at different instants destabilize on the vehicle surface; fluctuant pressure peak is detected at the closure region of the cavity. Surface pressure fluctuations occur on the vehicle surface with the cavity shedding