Numerical simulation of the flow field and radiation noise from a pump-jet propulsor under various stator pre-whirl angles

The effects of different stator pre-whirl angles on the hydrodynamic and noise performance of a pump-jet propulsor (PJP) are studied; these angles are the inlet, outlet, and stagger angles. The stress-blended eddy simulation (SBES) approach, used to describe flow details around a PJP, is combined with the variational Lighthill's analogy to perform the acoustic calculation. The discrete peaks of the unsteady thrust of a single rotor blade and of all of the rotor blades are located at the harmonics of the blade passage frequency for stator (BPF_s) and the blade passage frequency for rotor (BPF_r), respectively. The trend in the amplitude with the pre-whirl angle at various harmonics follows no systematic rule, but the excessive pre-whirl angle increases the amplitude in the whole spectrum. With increases in pre-whirl angle, the stator sheet vortex and root vortex are weakened and enhanced, respectively, leading to a reduction of the high turbulent kinetic energy (T_k) regime at the root. Further study of the PJP sound indicates that the discrete tonal noise is located at the BPF_s, BPF_r, and their harmonics; the pre-whirl angle does not affect these locations, except in the largest inlet angle case. The cases with the least pre-whirl angle have an extremely low noise level, particularly at the outlet angle, which has an obvious downstream directivity.