Experiments in Fluids 36 (2004) 575585
DOI 10.1007/s00348-003-0699-5
Three-component velocity field measurements of propeller wake using
a stereoscopic PIV technique
Sang Joon Lee, Bu Geun Paik, Jong Hwan Yoon, Choung Mook Lee
Abstract A stereoscopic PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry)
technique was used to measure the three-dimensional flow
structure of the turbulent wake behind a marine propeller
with five blades. The out-of-plane velocity component was
determined using two CCD cameras with an angular dis-
placement configuration. Four hundred instantaneous
velocity fields were measured for each of four different
blade phases, and ensemble averaged in order to find the
spatial evolution of the propeller wake in the region from
the trailing edge up to one propeller diameter (D) down-
stream. The influence of propeller loading conditions on
the wake structure was also investigated by measuring the
velocity fields at three advance ratios (J=0.59, 0.72 and
0.88). The phase-averaged velocity fields revealed that a
viscous wake formed by the boundary layers developed
along the blade surfaces. Tip vortices were generated
periodically and the slipstream contracted in the near-
wake region. The out-of-plane velocity component and
strain rate had large values at the locations of the tip and
trailing vortices. As the flow moved downstream, the tur-
bulence intensity, the strength of the tip vortices, and the
magnitude of the out-of-plane velocity component at
trailing vortices all decreased due to effects such as viscous
dissipation, turbulence diffusion, and blade-to-blade
interaction.
Keywords Stereoscopic PIV, Propeller wake, Tip vortex,
Wake sheet
1 ties at discrete points by scanning the flow field with an
Introduction
As marine vehicles become larger and faster, the loading
on their propeller blades increases. This increased
Received: 6 December 2002 / Accepted: 22 July 2003
Published online: 10 March 2004

Springer-Verlag 2004
S. J. Lee (&), B. G. Paik, J. H. Yoon, C. M. Lee
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Pohang University
of Science and Technlogy, San 31, Hyo-Ja Dong,
790-784 Pohang, Korea
E-mail: sjlee@postech.ac.kr
Tel.: +82-54-2792169
Fax: +82-54-2793199
The present work was supported by the National Research Lab-
oratory Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology
(MOST) of Korea.
575
propeller loading may lead to problems such as noise, hull
vibration, and cavitation at high speed. The geometry of a
propeller should therefore be designed to minimize them.
In general, modern propeller blades have a complicated
geometry, making the wake behind the propellers com-
plicated too. Therefore, any serious attempt to optimize
the geometrical shape of modern propellers will require a
reliable wake analysis based on detailed experimental
measurements.
Marine propeller performance has been predicted using
the potential-based panel method (Lee 1987). Recently,
Cho and Lee (2000) introduced the B-spline higher order
panel method and showed that it yields more accurate
numerical results. It is well-known that numerical mod-
eling of propeller wakes only yields a satisfactory predic-
tion of the formation of tip or trailing vortices if it includes
adequate wake sheet modeling, based either on experi-
mental data or on a special theory. In addition, it is very
important to predict the strength and trajectory of the tip
vortices, which cause energy loss in propulsion, hull
vibration, and noise. In most previous numerical analyses
of propeller wakes (Lee 1987; Cho and Lee 2000), the actual
vortex sheet of the wake was assumed to be a thin filament
in order to predict the formation and trajectory of tip or
trailing vortices with or without an adequate wake sheet
model.
Experimental characterizations of propeller wakes have
predominantly been carried out using point-wise experi-
mental techniques, such as hot film, Pitot tube and LDV
(Laser Doppler Velocimetry), which measure flow veloci-
array of measurement probes. For example, Stella et al.
(1998) used LDV to measure the axial velocity component
of a propeller wake. Chesnakas and Jessup (1998) also used
LDV to study the tip vortex flow, although they found it
impossible to simultaneously measure all velocity vectors
in a section. However, point-wise methods such as LDV
require substantial time to acquire the phase-averaged
velocity field data.
Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) has also been used to
measure the flow around a marine propellers. Compared
with LDV, PIV has the advantages that it is less intrusive
and requires only a short measuring time to obtain the
phase-averaged velocity field over a large area, although
LDV has the advantage that it can obtain some flow
information without the need for spatial reconstruction.
Controni et al. (2000) used a PIV technique to investigate
the near-wake of a marine propeller at the longitudinal
plane in a cavitation tunnel. More recently, Lee et al.
 (2002) used the adaptive hybrid PTV (Particle Tracking
Velocimetry) method to investigate the propeller wake at
low Reynolds numbers up to the region of two propeller
diameters downstream in the longitudinal direction. They
measured the wake structure with good spatial resolution;
the experimental results revealed a flow pattern similar to
that reported by Controni et al. (2000), including blade-to-
blade interactions.
Recently, stereoscopic PIV (SPIV) has been used to
investigate the 3-D flow structure. Usually, the SPIV
technique uses two cameras at different angles to acquire
576
two particle images of the same instantaneous particle
configuration synchronized with the pulsed laser light
sheet. Having simultaneously captured images of the flow
from different angles at a range of times, intermediate
procedures can then be used to produce 3-D velocity fields
from the 2-D particle displacement information contained
in the flow images. This approach makes more accurate
flow analysis possible than can be achieved using the
conventional 2-D PIV technique, which uses a single
camera and can therefore supply only in-plane velocity
field information. In 2-D PIV measurements, information
about the out-of-plane motion is embedded in the in-plane
velocity field data, an approach that creates measurement
errors. Therefore, previous measurements of 3-D flow
structure using 2-D PIV may contain small errors caused
by the out-of-plane velocity component. The SPIV tech-
nique offers the opportunity to obtain flow information
without these errors.
Prasad and Adrian (1993) investigated the flow field
under a rotating disk using a two-camera SPIV technique
and analyzed the measurement errors due to the interfaces
between air, liquid and glass. Soloff and Adrian (1997)
developed a 3-D calibration method that does not require
system geometry information during reconstruction. They
measured calibration data at three different locations
parallel to the object plane and calculated a non-linear
mapping function providing the relationship between the
3-D object field and the 2-D image field for each camera.
Particle displacements could then be measured using this
mapping function. Yoon and Lee (2002) measured the flow
around an axial fan using a SPIV technique with a 3-D
calibration method. By directly comparing the in-plane
velocity components and local turbulence intensity mea-
sured using the 2-D PIV technique with the SPIV results,
they established that the maximum differences due to the
out-of-plane motion were about 2.7% and 5.8% respec-
tively. Recently, Calcagno et al. (2002) used a SPIV tech-
nique to measure the complicated 3-D flow behind a
propeller in the transverse plane, thereby revealing the
spatial evolution of the 3-D propeller wake.
The main objectives of the present study are to illus-
trate the usefulness of the SPIV technique for analyzing
complex 3-D flows, and to investigate the flow character-
istics of the wake behind a marine propeller in detail. In
the present work, SPIV is used to investigate the near-wake
of a marine propeller in the longitudinal plane. Four
hundred instantaneous velocity fields were measured at
four different phases of the propeller blade and phase-
averaged to investigate the spatial evolution of the flow
structure and turbulence statistics of the propeller wake.
2
Basic principles of SPIV
SPIV measurements were carried out using angular con-
figurations in which the two optical axes were neither
parallel nor perpendicular to the measurement plane, since
the angular displacement method, as shown in Fig. 1, re-
quires the image planes to be tilted at some angle with
respect to the object plane in order to focus the whole
entire measuring volume. Variations in the refractive in-
dex result in aberrations and particle image distortion,
leading to non-uniformities in the magnification. Since the
tilting of image planes and camera lenses causes image
distortion and variations in the magnification, a sophisti-
cated calibration procedure and a small aperture are
required to obtain accurate flow data.
When the ray tracing method is used in conjunction
with the angular configuration, the geometric relationship
between the real particle displacements Dx = (Dx, Dy, Dz)
and the projected displacements DX = (DX1, DY1, DX2, -
DY2) in the image-recording plane must be derived. The
geometric relationship between the two displacements in
the image plane, where two cameras are installed sym-
metrically with respect to the Z-axis as shown in Fig. 1,
can be expressed as follows:
DX1 a1 Dxa2 Dz 1
DY1 = a3 Dy + a4 Dz 2
DX2 = a5 Dx + a6 Dz 3
DY2 = a7 Dy + a8 Dz 4
The four equations for three unknown particle dis-
placements (Dx, Dy and Dz) are derived from the geo-
metric relationship between the object plane and the two
cameras. These equations can be solved by a least squares
method.
In the present work, image distortion and optical
aberration were compensated for using the calibration
procedure developed by Soloff and Adrian (1997). The
relation between the 3-D object volume and 2-D image
plane for stereo cameras can be written as
Fig. 1. Angular displacement configuration for SPIV
measurements
 577

Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of the SPIV

system

X = F(
x) 5 1.2 m 0.2 m 0.3 m (depth). Figure 3 shows the

Kp505 propeller for the KRISO 3600TEU container vessel
Here X = (X1, Y1, X2, Y2) is the projected image posi- tested in present study. The Kp505 propeller has five
tion and x = (x, y, z) is the real particle position in the blades with a design advance ratio J(=Va/(nD)) of 0.72.
object volume. The function F can be expressed in poly- Here, Va is the advance velocity, n is the rotational fre-
nomial form. Soloff and Adrian (1997) used a polynomial quency and D is the propeller diameter. For the Kp505
that was cubic in the x and y coordinates and quadratic in propeller, the propeller diameter is 54 mm and the hub
the z coordinate: ratio is 0.18. To examine the influence of propeller loading,
velocity field measurements were carried out at three ad-
F(x) = a0 a1 xa2 ya3 za4 x2 a5 xya6 xz vance ratios, of J=0.59, 0.72 and 0.88, corresponding to
a7 y2 a8 yza9 z2 a10 x3 heavy, design, and light loading respectively. The uniform
6 free stream velocity was fixed at 32.5 cm/s and the Rey-
a11 x2 ya12 x2 za13 xy2 a14 xyza15 xz2 nolds number based on the propeller diameter was about
3 2 2 18,000. The measurement plane was illuminated from the
a16 y a17 y za18 yz
bottom of the water channel with a thin laser light sheet
The particle displacement DX can be approximated of thickness 3 mm and the field of view was 66 cm.
as F(x)Dx. Here, F(x) can be obtained from the
measured calibration result F(x). Then the four equations
and three unknown particle displacements can be
calculated. Since the two CCD cameras were arranged in
a symmetric configuration, the displacement equations
for the Y direction in the first and second image planes
were averaged to improve the measurement accuracy
of DY1 and DY2.

3
Experimental apparatus and method
The SPIV system consists of a dual-head Nd:YAG laser,
two Kodak two-frame CCD cameras, a synchronizer, and
an IBM PC, as shown in Fig. 2. The Nd:YAG laser has a
pulse width of about 7 ns with a pulse energy of 125 mJ for
each head. The two CCD cameras, which are installed at an
angle of 50.8 to the Z-axis, each capture a particle image
of spatial resolution 10241024 pixels. The CCD cameras
and laser were synchronized with the angular position of
the propeller blade.
The circulating water channel in which the propeller Fig. 3. Geometry and specifications of the Kp505 propeller model
wake was measured had a test section size of tested in this study
578

Fig. 4. Typical instantaneous velocity fields subtracted by U0 at

/=0: a J=0.88; b J=0.72; c J=0.59

Silver-coated hollow glass beads with a mean diameter of

10 lm were used as seeding particles.
A servo-motor was used to drive the propeller and a
support strut was installed to prevent the transmission of
surges or vibrations of the propeller shaft (diameter 0.13D)
to the working fluid. The propeller, whose location was
defined to be X=0, was driven from downstream to ensure
that the wake generated by the supporting struts did not
affect the propeller wake. Since the propeller shaft aligned Fig. 5. Contour plots of phase-averaged axial velocity at /=0: a
with the X-axis (see Fig. 2), the center of the propeller J=0.88; b J=0.72; c J=0.59
wake could not be measured. The encoder mounted on the
servo-motor generated trigger signals to synchronize the
laser and CCD camera with an accuracy of 0.36 for each propeller model were measured at four different phases
selected angular position. The encoder signals were filtered (/=0, 18, 36, and 54), where a phase angle of /=0
with a low pass filter to obtain a clear trigger signal. The corresponds to the configuration with the blade in the
time interval Dt between two consecutive particle images upright position. The angular spacing between adjacent
was set to 300 ls, which corresponds to a propeller rota- measurement phases (18) corresponds to an elapsed time
tion of 0.9. The velocity fields of the wake behind the of about 6 ms.
 camera lenses, thereby ensuring accurate flow field data.
Three-dimensional velocity components (axial velocity
component u, vertical velocity component v, and out-of-
plane velocity component w) were deduced from two sets
of consecutive particle images captured from the left and
right cameras of the SPIV system. In the experiments,
2424 pixel interrogation windows overlapping by 50%
were used to obtain instantaneous velocity fields from the
particle images captured by each CCD camera.
Four hundred instantaneous velocity fields were ob-
tained for each measurement phase. The time-averaged in-
579
plane and out-of-plane velocity distributions, vorticity
distribution, strain rate distribution, and turbulence
characteristics such as turbulence intensity, were obtained
by ensemble-averaging the instantaneous velocity fields in
order to investigate the spatial evolution of the wake
structure.

4
Results and discussion
Fig. 6. Variation of axial velocity profile at several downstream Figure 4 shows typical instantaneous velocity fields (with
locations at J=0.72 the free stream velocity U0 subtracted off) at the phase
angle /=0. Here, the positive X- and Y-axes are nor-
malized by the propeller diameter D and lie parallel to the
The angular-type camera arrangement used in the main flow and vertically upward, respectively. For the
present SPIV system was carefully calibrated so as to advance ratios of J=0.59 and 0.72, wake sheets and tip
minimize errors due to any image distortion or non-uni- vortices are generated periodically from the blade tips in
form magnification created by the tilted image planes and the region around a depth of Y=0.5D. Under the light

Fig. 7. Spatial evolution of

phase-averaged spanwise vor-
ticity at J=0.72: a phase /=0;
b phase /=18; c phase /=36;
d phase /=54
580
Fig. 8. Contour plots of phase-averaged spanwise vorticity at creases (in other words, as J decreases), the magnitude of
/=0: a J=0.88; b J=0.72; c J=0.59
loading condition (J=0.88), no distinct vortices are
observed.
Contour plots of the phase-averaged axial velocity at
/=0 are shown in Fig. 5. For J=0.59 and 0.72, the axial
velocity of the slipstream is larger than that of the free
stream. For J=0.88, however, the shape of the slipstream is X=1D in the downstream region. In the present experi-
less clear and its axial velocity is much smaller than those ment, however, these oscillations of the slipstream were
Fig. 9. Open-water test results at Reynolds number = 1.3107
observed for the other loadings, apparently showing a
breaking condition. This unexpected phenomenon seems
to occur due to the Reynolds number scaling being too low
in the present experiment. The axial velocity component
has relatively small values near the blade tip (Y=0.5D)
compared to the corresponding values for J=0.59 and 0.72.
Figure 6 shows the axial velocity profiles at several
downstream locations for the advance ratio of J=0.72. The
velocity decreases outside the blade tip indicate the pres-
ence of a viscous wake. Since a laminar boundary layer
forms on the blade surface due to the low Reynolds
number, the retardative motion of the fluid particles in the
boundary layer are subject to stronger centrifugal forces
and push the viscous wake outside the tip radius (Y=-
0.5D). The viscous wake, which is obvious up to X=0.2D in
the downstream region but has disappeared by X=0.5D,
seems to be influenced by turbulent mixing because the
highly turbulent wake decreases the local velocity defect in
a short time period. The propeller wake containing trailing
vortices mixes with the free stream, and this turbulent
mixing decreases the local velocity defect rapidly as the
wake goes downstream.
An increase in axial velocity is observed within the
slipstream of the propeller wake at downstream locations
of X=0.05D and 0.2D. The viscous wake manifests in the
near-wake region due to the merging of two boundary
layers, developed on the pressure and suction sides of the
propeller blade respectively. As the propeller loading in-
the axial velocity component increases within the slip-
stream of the propeller wake. The slipstream contracts
toward the propeller shaft and this contraction continues
up to 1D downstream. In a previous 2-D flow measure-
ment of wake behind the same propeller model using a
2K 2K CCD camera and a hybrid PTV algorithm, Lee
et al. (2002) observed fluctuations of the slipstream near

Fig. 11. Phase-to-phase variation of out-of-plane velocity
component at J=0.72
Fig. 10. Spatial distributions of out-of-plane velocity (w) at /=0: present blade and the tip vortex generated from the pre-
a J=0.88; b J=0.72; c J=0.59
not clearly resolved due to the lower spatial resolution of layers that develop along the upper and lower blade sur-
the 1 K 1 K CCD cameras and the conventional SPIV
algorithm used to extract the velocity vectors.
Figure 7 shows the spatial evolution of the phase-
averaged spanwise vorticity (s-1) at J=0.72 for four con-
secutive phase angles. These plots show that as the flow
moves downstream, regularly-spaced tip vortices evolve.
These tip vortices are generated by the difference in
581
tangential velocity between the upper and lower surfaces
of a propeller blade. The trailing vortices, referred to as the
potential wake, originate from the trailing edge of the
propeller blade. The tip vortex appears as concentric
circles, whereas the trailing vortices have a curled shape
extending toward the propeller shaft from the tip.
Figure 8 shows a contour plot of the phase-averaged
spanwise vorticity at /=0 for three advance ratios. The
vorticity in the blade tip region increases significantly as
the propeller loading increases. This indicates that, com-
pared with the case of a light loading, more flow energy is
lost at the heavy loading due to the generation of stronger
tip vortices. For J=0.59 and 0.72, the tip vortex is skewed
upward in the downstream region up to X=0.5D. However,
the tip vortices are less skewed for the light loading of
J=0.88. This skewing of the tip vortex seems to be caused
by the strong interaction between the tip vortex and wake
sheet. As the wake flow goes downstream, the skewing
diminishes because of a weakening of the interaction be-
tween the tip vortex and wake sheet. For J=0.59 and 0.72,
the path of the tip vortices contracts toward the propeller
shaft downstream of X=0.5D. This larger contraction of
the tip vortex trajectory over the region up to X=0.5D
seems to result from blade-to-blade interaction. Specifi-
cally, the blade wake within the slipstream is faster than
the projection of the tip vortices in the axial direction,
leading to an interaction between the blade wake of the
vious blade. The trailing vortices are composed of two
vortex sheets with opposite sign due to the boundary
faces. For J=0.88, the trailing vortices of positive sign ap-
pear clearly at regular intervals and are stronger than those
of negative sign. However, as the loading increases, the
trailing vortices of negative sign increase in magnitude,
whereas those of positive sign decrease.
For J=0.88, the axial velocity within the slipstream is
smaller than that of the free stream, compared to that for
582
Fig. 12. Phase-averaged in-plane strain rate
xy distributions at
/=0: a J=0.88; b J=0.72; c J=0.59
J=0.59. The breaking condition of negative thrust seems to
be brought on by viscous effects due to the low Reynolds
number of 1.8104. In fact, the advance ratio J can be
chosen by holding either the advance velocity or the
propeller revolution speed constant while the varying the
other variable. Given the limited choice of low advance
velocity with the present experimental setup, the revolu-
tion speed of the model propeller was significantly lowered
Fig. 13. Phase-averaged out-of-plane normal strain rate (
zz)
distributions at /=0: a J=0.88; b J=0.72; c J=0.59
to achieve J=0.88. Apparently, such a low revolution speed
was insufficient to generate the designed thrust magnitude,
which was reflected in the results of U/U0 in the slipstream
at J=0.88, as shown in Fig. 5.
Figure 9 shows the open-water test results of the Kp505
propeller at a Reynolds number of 1.3107, where the
boundary layer flow over the blade surface is turbulent.
The thrust and torque acting on the propeller in

Fig. 14. Phase-to-phase variation of turbulence intensity in at
J=0.72: a axial turbulence intensity; b vertical turbulence intensity
open-water are normalized by the fluid density, revolution
speed and propeller diameter to give the parameters KT
and KQ, respectively. The values of KT and KQ decrease
monotonically with increasing advance ratio. At J=0.88, KT
has the small value of 0.09. As the Reynolds number
increases above 1.0105, the skin friction slowly decreases
up to a Reynolds number of 106 and then the flow becomes
predominantly turbulent. For small Reynolds numbers
(<1.0105), the variation in skin friction is roughly
inversely proportional to the square root of the Reynolds
number. This implies that the skin friction is higher at
smaller Reynolds numbers, leading to a greater tendency
toward flow separation under those conditions. Therefore,
the significant reduction of thrust at J=0.88 observed in the
present experiments, which leads to the breaking condi-
tion, can be attributed to laminar boundary layer separa-
tion resulting from the low Reynolds number of about 104
used in this study.
To investigate the out-of-plane motion of the flow
structure at the three loadings, the out-of-plane velocity
component (w) distribution was measured by SPIV. As
shown in Fig. 10, the out-of-plane velocity component has
large values along the trailing vortices. As the loading is
increased, the value of w becomes larger within the slip-
stream. This indicates that the magnitude of the out-of-
plane motion is greatest near the trailing vortices in the
slipstream region. For light loading (J=0.88), the value of w
near the trailing vortices is smaller than for the other
loadings, indicating smaller out-of-plane motions. The
present observation of non-axial flow motion of the wake
indicates that not all of the propulsion energy is used
583
effectively. Therefore, measurements of the out-of-plane
velocity component together with the strength of the tip
vortices, such as those presented here, could be used to
guide the design of more effective marine propellers.
Figure 11 shows the phase-to-phase variation of the
out-of-plane velocity component at the locations of the tip
vortices for J=0.72. The out-of-plane velocity of the tip
vortices decreases gradually beyond the downstream
location of X=0.2D. These results show that the magnitude
of the out-of-plane velocity of the tip vortices is about
813% of the free stream velocity in the near-wake region.
This means that, if the same propeller wake were measured
with using a 2-D PIV system, the in-plane velocity field
would be slightly overestimated due to perspective error
caused by the out-of-plane velocity component.
The in-plane strain rate
xy was calculated for the three
loading conditions to investigate the behavior of the
spanwise vortices near the tip vortices. The diagonal and
off-diagonal terms in the strain rate tensor

ij (= (Ui,j + Uj,i)/2) are related to extensional strains and
shearing strains, respectively. The in-plane strain rate

xy (= u/y + v/X) can be calculated using the phase-
averaged in-plane velocity components from which the
perspective errors due to out-of-plane motion have been
removed. Figure 12 shows the spatial distribution of the
phase-averaged in-plane strain rate at each loading condi-
tion. Under the design (J=0.72) and heavy (J=0.59) loading
conditions, the in-plane strain rate shows strong positive
values at the locations of the tip vortices. On the other hand,
weak in-plane strains with negative values are observed
beneath the tip vortices. At the light loading condition
(J=0.88), weak in-plane strains with positive values appear
in the region of the negative vortices, whereas a region of
strong negative in-plane strains is observed outside the
negative vortices shown in Fig. 8a. The negative in-plane
strains are in a staggered arrangement with the positive in-
plane strains. From these results, we can conjecture that at
the light loading condition, both the positive vortices and
negative vortices are associated with the tip vortices.
In addition to the in-plain strain rate
xy, the out-of-
plane normal strain rate
zz was also estimated using the
following continuity equation:
@w @u @v
ezz


exx
eyy 7
@z @x @y
The normal strain rate
zz corresponds to the out-of-
plane velocity gradient in the direction normal to the
measurement cross section, and therefore provides a
measure of the out-of-plane motion around the tip and
584

p
u02
Fig. 15. Spatial distribution ofpaxial
turbulence intensity U0 and
v02
vertical turbulence intensity U0 at /=0: a J=0.88; b J=0.72;
c J=0.59
trailing vortices. The
zz distributions at /=0, depicted in the strength and skew of the tip vortices decreased. The in-
Fig. 13, show that the out-of-plane motion is concentrated plane strain rate information suggested that the positive
within the slipstream region and that the strength of the vortices outside the tip vortices at light loading are asso-
out-of-plane motion becomes stronger as the loading ciated with the tip vortices.
increases. However, the out-of-plane velocity component In the near wake region, the axial turbulence intensity
cannot be recovered from the normal strain rate
zz, which decreased gradually whereas the vertical turbulence
only indicates the existence of complicated 3-D flow intensity remained almost constant as the wake moved
structure. downstream due to the rotation of the propeller. For the
The spatial distributions of the turbulence intensity design and heavy loading conditions, the axial turbulence
were obtained by ensemble averaging the fluctuation of intensity was concentrated on the wake region, and the
velocity fields. Figure 14 shows the variation of the axial energy of the wake flow was diffused as the flow moved
585
and vertical turbulence intensities near the tip vortices and downstream.
trailing vortices for J=0.72. As the wake goes downstream Strong out-of-plane motion was observed within the
in the near-wake region of 0<X<0.5D, the axial turbulence propeller slipstream. As the propeller loading increased,
intensity decreases. However, in the same region, the the out-of-plane motion in the wake region was enhanced.
vertical turbulence intensity stays almost constant at The out-of-plane velocity beyond the location of the tip
44.5%. Beyond the near-wake region, the axial and ver- vortices was about 813% of the free stream velocity in
tical turbulence intensities gradually converge to the free the near-wake region. This large out-of-plane velocity
stream value (2%) due to viscous dissipation and tur- component may be the main source of the perspective
bulent diffusion. errors that lead to overestimation of the in-plane velocity
p p
Figure 15 shows the turbulence intensity distributions field for 2-D PIV. Therefore, the present results indicate
02 02
of the axial and vertical velocity components ( Uu0 ; Um0 ) that a SPIV technique that measures the three velocity
normalized by the free stream velocity U0. As the propeller components will be very useful for the accurate charac-
loading increases, the turbulence intensity for the axial terization of propeller wakes with strong out-of-plane
velocity component increases markedly. For the case of motions. Given that an accurate analysis of the wake
J=0.72 and 0.59, the axial and vertical turbulence intensi- characteristics is helpful to optimizing the design of ship
ties display local high values along the traces of the tip and propellers, consideration of SPIV results in the propeller
trailing vortices, compared with the other regions of the design process should lead to the production of more
wake. The flow interaction between the tip vortices and the efficient propellers.
wake sheet leads to the presence of finite turbulence
intensities of the axial and vertical velocity components in
the far downstream region. The magnitude of the axial
turbulence intensity is larger than that of the vertical References
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tested in this study. analysis behind a ship by stereo PIV. Proc of 24th Symposium on
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Chesnaks C, Jessup S (1998) Experimental characterisation of pro-
well with the vorticity contours for all three loading cases peller tip flow. Proc of 22nd Symposium on Naval Hydrody-
(see Figs. 8 and 14), indicating that the turbulence inten- namics, Washington D.C., pp 156169
sity produced from the rotating propeller shaft makes only Cho CH, Lee CS (2000) Numerical experimentation of a 2-D B-spline
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36
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5 Lee JT (1987) A potential-based panel method for the analysis of
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Engineering, MIT, Mass.
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Tip vortices were formed from the propeller and moved Prasad AK, Adrian RJ (1993) Stereoscopic particle image velocimetry
applied to liquid flows. Exp Fluids 15:4960
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