Numerical study on cavitation erosion risk of marine propellers operating in wake flow

Abstract

This paper discusses the application of the CFD to cavitating flow around marine propellers operating in ship wake. Especially the emphasis was put on the tip vortex cavitation and the erosive cavitation around the trailing edge. This research found that adaptive mesh refinement methodology was effective for the resolution of tip vortex cavitation. Next, barotropy model and full cavitation model were validated, and show qualitatively agreement with the experimental results. Finally, simple four cavitation erosion indexes were applied for the estimation of the erosion risk and one index shows good agreement with the experimental results. It is concluded that the RANS CFD gives the valuable information for judging the erosion risk although its presumption accuracy and numerical stability need to be improved.