Experimental Study of Cavitation Damage to Marine Propellers Based on the Rotational Speed in the Coastal Waters

Cavitation in a propeller causes erosion, accelerating corrosion, and tearing off blades severe cases. Despite the maintenance requirements caused by cavitation, few studies have investigated cavitation resistance of small ship propellers. Therefore, this study, these characteristics were through demonstration test coastal waters South Korea. erosion analyzed according to low- high-rotational speed propeller, weight was measured every 10 h for 100 sailing. The pits qualitatively compared liquid penetrant testing (PT) quantitatively image processing with color edge detection. results showed that loss at high double low speed. exhibited one cycle each incubation, acceleration, deceleration, steady state speed, while acceleration deceleration periods repeated According PT detection, concentration high-speed conditions increased towards trailing leading edges, respectively. Further, radial direction, trend similar both conditions, largest number detected region 0.7–0.9R, where R is radius.