Modelling of three dimensional sheet cavitation on marine propellers using a boundary element method

The current paper presents results of a research programmededicated to the analysis of cavitating marine propellers using Boundary Element Methods. The goal of the programmeis the computational assessment of the blade forces and mo-ments exerted on the cavitating propeller operating in a shipwake and its resulting hull pressure fluctuations.
The theo-retical and numerical formulation of the steady and unsteady,wetted and cavitating flow models applied are explained. Results are presented on the verification and validation of thecode for steady and unsteady wetted flow, and it is shownthat the results compare well with theory, other boundary element methods and experimental data.
For the steady cavitating flow, grid convergence is illustrated, and a comparisonbetween numerical results and experimental data obtained indifferent cavitation laboratories is done for two propellers atseveral loading conditions.
The overall agreement is good.Finally, for unsteady inflow conditions, preliminary compu-tations of the cavitation extent for the same propellers arecompared with experimental data.