Abstract
To design quiet ships an understanding of propeller noise is desirable. Starting from cavitation tunnel measurements of tip vortex cavitation (TVC) noise, the ‘TVC noise envelope’ concept was developed to hypothesize that TVC noise N I =N B +N V .
N B represents the noise from cavitation nuclei expanding into the tip vortex and N V represents the formation noise of the visible vortex cavity. To test this hypothesis three dimensional foil results were used. By simulating the growth of spherical bubbles spiraling around a Rankine vortex, the N B component was shown to be in good agreement with the measured TVC noise envelope. By ejecting air from the foil tip, the N V component was experimentally simulated and its noise signal compared with the actual TVC noise signal.
From these simulation results, the role of cavitation nuclei, tip vortex strength and radius on the TVC noise mechanism could be better understood.
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