Numerical Modeling of Tip Vortex Flow of Marine Propellers

The accurate prediction of the flow and the pressure distribution near the tip of the blade is crucial in determining the tip vortex cavitation inception which usually occurs on the blade tip or inside the core of the tip vortex just downstream of the blade tip. An improved boundary element method is applied to the prediction of the flow around propeller blades, with emphasis at the tip region. In the method, the Blow adapted grid and a higher order panel method, which combines a hyperboloidal panel geometry with a hi-quadratic dipole distribution, are used in order to accurately model the trailing wake geometry and the highly rolled-up regions in the wake. The method is applied to several propeller geometries and the results have been found to agree well to the existing experimental data. Inviscid flow methods are able to predict the pressures at the tip as well as the shape of the trailing wake. On the other hand, they are unable to determine the flow inside the viscous core of the tip vortex, where cavitation inception often occurs. Thus, a method is presented that treats the flow inside the viscous core. The inner flow is treated with a 2-D Clavier-stokes solution without making any assumptions for axisymmetric flow and conicity of the flow along the tip trajectory. The method can thus allow the treatment of general propeller blade configurations. The velocity and pressure distributions inside the core are shown and compared to those from other numerical methods.