A Panel Method for the Hydrodynamic Performance Prediction of a Water-jet and an Inducer

Abstract

This paper presents the analyses of the hydrodynamic performance for a marine water-jet propulsor and a rocket engine turbo pump inducer by using a potential flow solver based on a low order panel method. The steady and unsteady fully-wetted and cavitating simulations for the water-jet rotor only problem are investigated and the steady fully-wetted simulation for the inducer is studied in this paper. The convergence studies of rotor averaged cavitating circulation distributions with number of panels on the blade and with different time step sizes are presented in the water-jet case. Finally, the predictions of the hydrodynamic performance for the water-jet pump and the inducer from the present method are validated against existing experimental data or numerical results from RANS solvers.