The 8th International Conference on Numerical Ship Hydrodynamics

Busan, Korea, September 22-25, 2003

Sub-Visual Cavitation and Acoustic Modeling for Ducted Marine Propulsor

Jin Kim1, Eric Paterson2 and Frederick Stern3

Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA, USA

Background
Performance of ducted marine propulsor is influenced by a number of parameters
including tip-gap size, tip geometry, blade loading, and inflow structure. Especially, tip-
leakage vortex through tip-gap builds up relatively low pressure in vortex core. Since
small bubbles, or nuclei, respond to the local pressure field as they convect through the
propulsor, prediction of cavitation inception requires fidelity resolution of pressure and
associated flow features such as tip-leakage vortices, axial flow within the vortex core,
blade and duct boundary layers, and turbulence near and within the core. This provides
the motivation for the work here, where Reynolds-Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) will
provide high fidelity flow information on tip-leakage vortex and sub-visual cavitation and
acoustic model will be applied with RANS solution.

Objective
The objective of this work is to develop validated capability for fidelity RANS
simulation of ducted marine propulsor, and a model that can simulate the dynamics of
sub-visual traveling-bubble cavitation and its acoustic noise wherein nuclei are subject to
pressure fluctuations provided by a combination of RANS solution and ad-hoc model for
turbulent fluctuations.

Approach
The first part of this study is to obtain verified and validated RANS solution for
David Taylor model propeller 5206 (Judge et al., 2001), which is a three-bladed rotor in a
cylindrical duct. The incompressible RANS code, CFDSHIP-IOWA (Paterson et al.,
2003) is extended for RANS simulation of marine propulsor by adding the relative
rotating coordinate system and Chimera overset grid method. The mesh interpolation
code, PEGASUS (Suhs et al., 2002) is used for the exchange of the flow information
between the overset grids. The second part of this study is to simulate the dynamics of
sub-visual traveling-bubble cavitation and the associated hydro-acoustic noise due to
bubble collapse. The modified Rayleigh-Plesset equation is solved along the bubble

1
Graduate Research Assistant, Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Iowa, (Ph) 319-
335-5220, (Fax) 319-335-5238, (Email) jin-kim@uiowa.edu
2
Senior Research Associate, Applied Research Laboratory, The Pennsylvania State University, (Ph) 814-
865-7315, (Fax) 814-865-8896, (Email) eric-paterson@psu.edu
3
Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Iowa, (Ph) 319-335-5215, (Fax)
319-335-5238, (Email) frederick-stern@uiowa.edu

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The 8th International Conference on Numerical Ship Hydrodynamics
Busan, Korea, September 22-25, 2003

trajectory with and without turbulence fluctuation model in RANS pressure field. The
acoustic noise induced by collapsing bubble is computed from the far field form of
acoustic pressure for a spherical bubble.

Preliminary Results
The use of Chimera overset grid gives not only the convenience to construct the
grid system for complex geometry but also provides the high quality resolution for the
tip-gap and tip-leakage vortex flow. Figure 1 shows the overall flow structure near tip
region and blade surface pressure. Tip-leakage vortex and trailing edge vortex merge
with low pressure along the tip-leakage vortex. Minimum pressure is obtained at suction
side of blade tip. The detail tip-leakage vortex near the trailing edge of blade tip is
compared with experiment in Figure 2 and 3. Figure 4 shows the typical behavior of
traveling sub-visual cavitation close to cavitation inception. The cavitation bubble grows
and collapses very rapidly and hydro-acoustic noise is emitted due to bubble collapse.

Final Paper
In the completed paper, verification and validation (V&V) of RANS solution will
be shown by V&V procedure, which is provided by Stern et al. (2001). In this procedure,
Thrust and torque are used for the integral variables and rotational velocity vectors on
horizontal and vertical cut line at the center of tip-leakage vortex is used for the point
variable. The analysis of flow field in tip-leakage vortex will be shown including
comparison with experiment and other computational result (Brewer, 2002). The detail
analysis for sub-visual cavitation will be also shown with effect of initial bubble radius,
cavitation number and turbulence fluctuation in pressure field.

References
Brewer, W. H. (2002), “On Simulating Tip-Leakage Vortex Flow to Study the Nature of
Cavitation Inception,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Mississippi State University.

Judge, C. Q., Oweis, G. F., Ceccio, S. L., Jessup, S. D., Chesnakas, C. J., and Fry, D. J.
(2001), “Tip-Leakage Vortex Inception on a Ducted Rotor,” CAV2001: 4th International
Symposium on Cavitation, Pasadena, California, USA.

Paterson, E. G., Wilson, R. V., and Stern, F. (2003), “General-Purpose Parallel Unsteady
RANS Ship Hydrodynamics Code: CFDSHIP-IOWA,” IIHR Report No. xxx.

Stern, F., Wilson, R. V., Coleman, H., and Paterson, E. G. (2001), “Comprehensive
Approach to Verification and Validation of CFD Simulations – Part 1: Methodology and
Procedure,” ASME J. Fluids Eng., Vol. 123, No. 4, pp. 793-802.

Suhs, N. E., Rogers, S. E., and Dietz, W. E. (2002), “PEGASUS 5: An Automated Pre-
Processor for Overset-Grid CFD,” AIAA Paper 2002-3186.

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The 8th International Conference on Numerical Ship Hydrodynamics
Busan, Korea, September 22-25, 2003

Figure 1. Flow structure and surface pressure and pressure along tip-leakage vortex

(a) Experiment (b) Computation

Figure 2. Velocity vectors and tangential velocity contours

(a) Experiment (b) Computation

Figure 3. Vorticity contours

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The 8th International Conference on Numerical Ship Hydrodynamics
Busan, Korea, September 22-25, 2003

Figure 4. The response of bubble radius and acoustic noise near cavitation inception