Project Details
Projekt
Experimental Investigation of Fundamental Mechanisms of Ventilation on Hydrofoils Operating Near a Free Surface
Subject Area
Fluid Mechanics
Energy Process Engineering
Energy Process Engineering
Term
since 2024
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 543184995
In response to the European Commission’s 2030 climate and energy framework goals, Europe’s plans for extending offshore wind capacity forecasts an increase in wind farms in the coming years. This also calls for support vessels to carry out various operations such as wind turbine installation, inspection and so forth. The ventilation on propellers, drawing of air from the free water surface, that is associated with the operating conditions expected for these vessels can pose serious problems, such as damaging dynamics loads on propeller and shaft bearings, reduction in the propeller thrust and influence on the vessel’s stability. Our understanding of the exact mechanism of ventilation in these scenarios is unclear, and new numerical efforts are increasingly being developed to assist the investigation. We propose to perform quantitative experiments on ventilation using surface-piercing and submerged hydrofoils to identify the mechanism of ventilation and provide invaluable validation data for numerical models. The submerged hydrofoil adequately represents the ventilation on submerged propellers, as would be present in the vessel problem, and greatly simplifies the ventilating flow fields to be investigated. The quantitative measurements constitute two aspects, namely, measurement of the ventilated air (void fraction) and measurement of the three-dimensional flow field (velocity) where the ventilation occurs using, tomographic techniques. This would allow attainment of volumetric information from experiments to help facilitate the better understanding of this phenomena and validation of emerging numerical work.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
Co-Investigator
Dr.-Ing. Jens Neugebauer, Ph.D.
