A two-phase mixture model was established to study unsteady cavitating flows. A local compressible system of equations was derived by introducing a density-pressure function to account for the two-phase flow of water/vapor and the transition from one phase to the other. An algorithm for solving the variable-density Navier-Stokes equations of cavitating flow problem was put forward. The numerical results for unsteady characteristics of cavitating flows on a 2D NACA hydrofoil coincide well with experimental data. A two-phase mixture model was established to study unsteady cavitating flows. A local compressible system of equations was derived by introducing a density-pressure function to account for the two-phase flow of water / vapor and the transition from one phase to the other . The algorithm for solving the variable-density Navier-Stokes equations of cavitating flow problem was put forward. The numerical results for unsteady characteristics of cavitating flows on a 2D NACA hydrofoil coincide well with experimental data.