Numerical comparative investigation into tip vortex cavitation flow and noise of submarine propellers using incompressible and compressible hybrid computational hydro-acoustic solvers

Abstract

In this study, the effects of skew angle and vapor compressibility on tip vortex cavitation (TVC) and cavitation noise of underwater submarine propellers are investigated using the hybrid computational hydro-acoustics method, which consists of the sequential application of the Delayed Detached Eddy Simulation (DDES) for the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes equations and the Ffowcs Williams and Hawkings (FW-H) equation. The target objects are the DARPA suboff submarine body and two high-skew propellers with a skew angle of 17 and 38 degrees, respectively. First, the effects of skew angle on the cavitation flow of two propellers installed on the submarine are predicted using the incompressible RANS solver. Second, both the incompressible and compressible simulations are applied to investigate the vapor compressibility effect on the TVC flow and noise for both propellers. The corresponding experiments are performed in the Large Cavitation Tunnel (LCT) of the Korea Research Institute of Ships and Ocean Engineering (KRISO) and show good agreements with the numerical results. It is found that the propeller of a skew angle of 38 degrees produces less TVC noise than that of 17 degrees, and the TVC noise spectrum predicted using the compressible solver show closer agreement with the measure ones. ？ INTER-NOISE 2021 .All right reserved.