Numerical investigation of pressure pulse predictions for propellers mounted on an inclined shaft

Paper in proceedings, 2019

In the presented study, two high-skew model scale marine propellers were tested in the cavitation tunnel and the induced pressure pulses were measured during the test. Propeller shaft was inclined about 10 degrees to create blade load variations. The cavitation pattern were recorded using high speed videos. The open-source package openFOAM and commercial package Star-ccm+ are used as simulation tools to predict pressure pulses numerically. By using the fully turbulent SST k − ω model, the predicted wetted flow pressure pulse levels agreed well compared to experimental measurements, but together with Schnerr-Sauer cavitation mass transfer model, massive cavitation was predicted which lead to inaccurate pressure pulse predictions. The transition sensitive turbulence model γ − Re θ model is used to study the cases, and simulation results reveal the existence of laminar-transition zone and vortex structures on the propeller blades. Attempts are made to linking correlation-based separation region from the transition model and the cavitation model, and good predictions of cavitation pattern are achieved but the predicted pressure pulses levels are merely improved.