Numerical investigation of tip leakage cavitation noise based on Powell vortex sound theory

초록

Unsteady cavitating flow results in turbulent noise. In this study, the tip leakage cavitation induced by NACA0009 hydrofoil under different cavitation numbers was investigated using computational fluid dynamics, with large eddy simulation [LES] and volume of fluid [VOF] method. The cavitation noise was simulated using the Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings (FW-H) equation. The results demonstrate that evolution of cavitation features show well agreement with high-speed photography observations. With the cavitation development, regions with high sound pressure level (SPL] increase, butthe maximum SPL remains relatively constant around 160 dB. For fully development tip leakage cavitation state, high-frequency bands fluid noise is enhanced, and maximum SPL increases by 5-10 dB compared with inception cavitation. The results obtained by Powell vortex sound theory show that the vorticity stretching effect and the drastic kinetic energy changing caused by cavitating flow lead to increased noise source terms, resulting in higher acoustic source intensity. The conclusions may provide a fundamental understanding of the empirical formula construction between sound power and noise sources in cavitating flows. © 2025 Institute of Physics Publishing. All rights reserved.