Study on prediction of tip-vortex cavitation inception

The inception of propeller tip vortex cavitation is investigated by using bubble dynamics equation and bubble motion equation. A new scaling relation model about tip vortex cavitation inception is put forward by means of simplifying Reyleigh-Plesset equation together with scaling law of minimum pressure coefficient. The scaling effects of tip vortex cavitation inception among different scale models are studied. The propeller tip vortex flowfield is calculated using RANS method and the explicit algebraic Reynolds stress model with rotation-curvature correction is adopted. The calculated results show that the numerical method can exactly predict the velocity distribution in tip vortex flowfield. The predicted cavitation inception number is higher than that of experimental result. The results predicted by scaling relation model agree well with the simulated result by numerical method and are more conservative.