Sources and mechanisms of flow loss and hydroacoustics in a pre-swirl stator pump-jet propulsor

Abstract

Accurately identifying sources of flow loss and hydroacoustics and clarifying the mechanism of their generation are crucial for directing the optimal design of efficient and quiet pump-jet propulsors (PJPs). In this paper, numerical simulations of steady and unsteady flow are performed for a PJP equipped with pre-swirl stationary vanes, based on which both sources of flow loss and hydroacoustics are investigated at multi-level granularity. Analyses of flow efficiency and entropy generation rate are performed to identify the sources of flow loss, and analyses of thrust fluctuation and wall pressure fluctuation are conduced to identify the sources of hydroacoustics. The results indicate that the pressure drag accounts for 76% of the total drag and is mainly contributed from the stator and the duct, but the flow efficiency of the rotor is much smaller than that of the stator and the sources of the flow loss are mainly located at three regions of the rotating blades: the leading edge, the tip, and the corner of the suction surface. The hydroacoustic sources are mainly located at the leading edge and the tip of the rotating blades due to stator–rotor and duct–rotor interactions, respectively, but the Taylor's frozen turbulence hypothesis is inappropriate to describe the wake evolution of the stationary vanes owing to the potential interaction caused by the blade rotation.