Hydrodynamics and Hydroacoustics Investigation of a Blade Profile in a Hubless Propeller System Based on a Hybrid Approach

Abstract

The scope of the paper is the investigation of the hydrodynamic and hydroacoustic characteristic of a blade profile within a hubless propeller system. A hybrid procedure was applied in which the flow simulation results in terms of velocity and pressure fields were used as source terms for the hydroacoustics calculations. The Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) simulation of the complex 3D system was done using a scale resolving Detached Eddy Simulation (DES). The calculation of the acoustics was carried out using the Expansion about Incompressible Flow (EIF) approach. For the spatial discretization of the EIF equations the Finite Volume Moving Least Squares (FV-MLS) method was used. This method has promising features especially in the application of unstructured meshes. A first verification of the acoustic model is presented. For the validation of the used numerical methods extensive experimental hydrodynamics and hydroacoustics investigations of the hubless propeller system were carried out.