Numerical Simulation and Vorticity Analysis of Cavitating Flow Around a Marine Propeller Behind the Hull

In this paper, the unsteady cavitating turbulent flow around a marine propeller behind the hull is simulated by the k-ω SST turbulence model coupled with the Zwart cavitation model. Three systematic refined structured meshes around the hull and propeller have been generated to study the predicted cavitation patterns and pressure fluctuations. Numerical results indicate that the predicted transient cavitating flow behind the hull wake, including sheet cavitation and tip vortex cavitation, shows quasi-periodic feature and agrees fairly well with the available experimental data. The deviations of pressure fluctuations between experimental data and numerical results are much small. With mesh refining, the cavitation region and the magnitudes of the calculated pressure fluctuations increase, while the differences between two adjacent sets of grids become smaller. In addition, the uncertainty of the thrust coefficient obtained by Factor of Safety method is significantly small. Further, the interaction between the cavitation and the vortex by the relative vorticity transport equation is illustrated. Results show that the magnitude of stretching term is obviously larger than the other three terms, and the dilatation term and the baroclinic term both have an important influence on the generation of vortices.