Numerical analysis of acoustic noise propagation from a submerged marine propeller

From the view point of noise recognition, one of the weaknesses of surface and underwater vessels is the generated noise from its propeller. The first effort in order to reduce this noise is to attain the technology to predict and compute the generated noise by the propeller in different operational conditions. In this paper, by introducing the Kichohf’s method for solving the acoustic equations, hydrodynamic analysis of a semi-submerged Series-B propeller is performed and, subsequently, using the obtained acoustic pressure in the pressure field around the propeller, the noise field generated by the propeller is examined and analyzed. The hydrodynamic analysis of the propeller is accomplished by the Ansys-CFX software, while the acoustic analysis of the resulting pressure distribution is performed by the developed code “Acoustic Python”. The validated results of noise propagation in different directions at various distances indicate accurate performance of this software.