Investigation of Unsteady Flow Fields on High Speed Propellers by Means of the Particle Image Velocimetry Technique

Kurzfassung

This paper illustrates the measurement campaign performed at the Low Speed Tunnel (LST) of the DNW in order to demonstrate the applicability of the Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) to large industrial facilities. The flow field measurements have been carried out on the model of a modern high speed propeller. The unsteady flow field downstream of the propeller disk has been investigated and the instantaneous and the mean flow velocity fields have been measured for different angle of attack, jaw angle and rotational speed of the propeller. Furthermore, the trajectories and the intensity of the tip vortex have been evaluated. The main objective is to illustrate that by means of PIV it is possible to obtain accurate quantitative measurements of unsteady flow fields using the same technologies (tracer particles, laser light sheet, video cameras) as the classical qualitative flow visualization