Author(s): Ville S. Lamsa; Juha Virtanen; Aki Kinnunen; Pekka Koskinen

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Abstract: Cavitation is a significant cause of wear, noise and loss of efficiency in marine propellers. In this study the impact forces due to cavitation cloud collapse are investigated in context of icepropeller interaction. Force measurements from the propeller blade indicate that the hydrodynamic non-contact forces are relevant when the loads on the blade are developed during the ice-propeller interaction. According the measurements one could claim that the measured short duration force peaks are due to cavitation cloud collapse. These cavitation clouds originate from the previous blade while milling the ice block and collapse once arriving on the pressure side of the next blade. In this article the coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian method is used to efficiently compute the impact forces generated by the collapse of the cavitation clouds. The results of the impact forces show that the peak impact forces due to collapse of the ice-induced cavitation clouds are high enough to damage the propeller blade. Thus the presented results do not prevent a possibility that the measured force peaks would be caused by the collapse of the cavitation clouds. The results of the impact forces can be thereafter also used to develop simplified formulas for the cavitation loading which, on the other hand, can be used for example on the basis of the ice rules.

DOI:

Year: 2014