Coupled Hydrodynamics-Hydroacoustics BEM Modelling of Marine Propellers Operating in a Wakefield

Combined hydrodynamic/hydroacoustic formulations for the analysis of marine propellers operating in a non-homogeneous flow are presented. The hydrodynamic model is based on a Boundary Element Method for inviscid flows and is applied here to study pressure fluctuations induced by a propeller to solid boundaries and noise radiated to the open flow. Two hydroacoustic models based on a standard Bernoulli equation model for incompressible flows and on a wave propagation model are compared. Numerical applications are presented to analyse the capability of these two methodologies to describe the disturbances generated by non cavitating and cavitating propellers in operating conditions.