Numerical modelling of freestream cavitating flow through ship propeller using OpenFOAM

Abstract

In marine industry, cavitation has been a massive problem when dealing with ship propeller. One of the main effects caused by cavitation is thrust breakdown, which decreases the efficiency of propeller. It is difficult to completely avoid this phenomenon, but there are ways to reduce its occurrence. It is important to study the phenomenon in the process of designing propeller. For that reason, cavitation prediction on certain geometry is compulsory to give out the optimal ship propeller design. In this paper, the cavitation analysis on propeller VP1304 was conducted numerically utilizing OpenFOAM code. The motion of the propeller was represented by Arbitrary Mesh Interface (AMI) methodology with the aid of RANS turbulence models. The authors examined the differences between k-ε model and k-ω SST model in this case with the involvement of Schnerr-Saur, Merkle and Kunz cavitation model. The results achieved shows that the k-ω SST model performed more accurately in term of propeller thrust, torque and efficiency prediction. Furthermore, among the three employed cavitation models, Schnerr-Saur agrees best with empirical data, and hence, can be considered most suited for this analysis.