Applied Scientific Research 58: 33–50, 1998.

A. Biesheuvel and GJ.F. van Heijst (eds), In Fascination of Fluid Dynamics. 33

© 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Cavitation Research and Ship Propeller Design

G. KUIPER
Marin, P.O. Box 28, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands

Abstract. The role of cavitation research in the design of ship propellers and the influence of re-
search on propeller design is reviewed. The historical development of research on bubble cavitation is
an example of a lack of communication between research and design. Research on sheet cavitation is
starting now and simplifications such as two dimensional cavitation are being made. It is argued from
observations on propellers that the use of two-dimensional cavitaties is not a proper simplification
to investigate sheet cavitation. An illustration is also given of the gap between the assessment of the
risk of erosion on propeller models and research on erosion. Finally, the simplifications of tip vortex
inception and the problems of the inception speed of propellers are discussed.

Key words: propeller, cavitation.

1. Introduction

It is an honor and a pleasure to give a paper on the occasion of the formal retirement
of Leen van Wijngaarden. He started his career at Marin (then Netherlands Ship
Model Basin) and the problems encountered there have always had his attention.
I have always felt the cooperation with Leen as an illustration of the fact that
technology and science are different and that they need each other.
The difference between science and technology is in the direction of thought:
scientific research wants to understand the phenomena and have insight in their
behavior, technology wants to design working equipment in specific applications,
where control of the phenomena is required. Abstraction from environmental com-
plexity in a laboratory is essential for scientific research, in technology there is the
complexity of the design and the impossibility to isolate various parameters.
The idea that technology is applied science is a gross simplification of technol-
ogy and leads to conflicts between scientists and designers. Designers will find the
scientific results insufficient for their application and scientists will blame design-
ers for the complexity of their designs. A technical university has this problem
internally, leading to a controversy between designers and scientist, especially
since Twente University gives itself the epitheton “Entrepeneurial University”. In
practice there is a distinction between scientific results and technology.
In the meantime, both science and technology develop rapidly and the distinc-
tions shift accordingly. Especially the development of computational fluid dynam-
ics (CFD) has an impact. But also in this field it can be observed that the distinction
34 G. KUIPER

Figure 1. Example of a ship propeller (courtesy: Esscher Wyss.

between scientific numerical results and technology has been forgotten and this has
already lead to serious disappointments on both sides.
In this paper I will try to illustrate the relation between science and technology
in the field I have been working on: cavitation on ship propellers. It is not my
intention to review literature, and I will focus on the viewpoint of the designer.

2. The Problems of the Designer

The first question is why cavitation is of interest for the propeller designer. The
answer is in the detrimental effects cavitation often has. There are three main
categories of detrimental effects: erosion, noise and vibrations. In case of severe
cavitation it may also cause thrust breakdown, but that problem is experienced
only with a restricted class of ships.
Why not eliminate cavitation? In uniform flow this might be possible in some
cases, but the propeller is generally mounted in the wake of the ship in order to re-
claim part of the energy which is lost by the resistance of the ship (hull efficiency).
This wake, however, is strongly non-uniform and the resulting inflow variations of
the blades make cavitation generally unavoidable. To limit the extent of cavitation,
propeller blades are relatively very thin in comparison to airfoils and the blade area
ratio is high, leading to a high aspect ratio of the blades (Figure 1).
The most common effect of cavitation is erosion. It means that the material of
the propeller is eroded due to the impact of cavitation on the blade. An example
of the effect of erosion is given in Figure 2, where the trailing edge of a propeller