Effects of blade tip thicknesses on hydrodynamic and noise performance of ducted propellers

Propeller noise plays an important role in underwater radiated noise. The radiated noise of a ducted propeller is closely related to the vorticity intensity in the gap between the blade tip and the inner wall surface of the duct. To investigate the influence of blade tip thickening on the hydrodynamic and noise performance of ducted propellers, six different models of ducted propellers with varying blade tip thicknesses are presented. The Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) method is used to simulate the flow around the ducted propellers, and a combination of Detached Eddy Simulation (DES) and acoustic boundary element method (BEM) is employed to predict the noise. The results show that thickening the blade tips leads to a 4.15% efficiency loss at J = 0.6, but improves efficiency by 17.61% at J = 0.8. As the blade tip thickness increases, the length of the blade tip vortex gradually decreases, and the turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) in the chordwise middle region of the blade tip decreases. Additionally, the peak values of thrust and torque fluctuations of the blades primarily occur at the blade passing frequency (BPF) and its harmonics, with the minimum amplitudes of the BPF at the maximum blade tip thickness. Thickening the blade tips results in a maximum overall sound pressure level reduction of 0.50 dB for the ducted propeller, with a maximum sound pressure level (SPL) reduction of 4.24 dB at certain dominant frequencies.