Tomographic-PIV Survey of the Near-Field Hydrodynamic and Hydroacoustic Characteristics of a Marine Propeller

This article deals with a pioneering application of tomographic particle image velocimetry (tomographic PIV) for the hydrodynamic and hydroacoustic analysis of a marine propeller. The hydrodynamic study was mainly focused on the topological analysis of the propeller wake characteristics in the near field based on the vorticity field and on the tilting and stretching terms of the vorticity transport equation: Hydroacoustic analysis concerned the use of tomographic PIV in combination with the Powell's acoustic analogy. Tomographic PIV proved to be a valid tool for the detailed quantitative reconstruction of the complex vortex topology in the propeller wake and provided an accurate description of the source terms of the Powell's analogy. In particular, it was shown that the tip vortex perturbation represents the dominant nonlinear contribution to the radiated far-field noise in noncavitating flow conditions.