Date of Award

Spring 2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Mechanical Engineering

Committee Director

Miltos Kotinis

Committee Member

Gene Hou

Committee Member

Jae Ho (Mike) Lee

Abstract

Cavitation is a major design constraint for marine propeller blade sections because it can reduce hydrodynamic performance, increase vibration and noise, and contribute to surface damage. This thesis develops and applies an exploratory computational framework for cavitation-aware hydrofoil-section design relevant to marine propeller blade development. The framework combines section-level CFD validation, CST-based geometry parameterization, pressure-based pre-screening, matched-load comparison, and focused predicted inception envelope or cavitation-bucket analysis.

The CFD methodology was validated against published YS-920 hydrofoil water-tunnel data using selected fully wetted, near-inception, and cavitating reference cases. The validation results showed that the adopted framework reproduced the key experimental trends needed for comparative design use, including the general location of cavitation onset, the asymmetry of the inception envelope, and the overall trends of the section force coefficients. Transition SST and standard SST turbulence models were also compared in selected cases in order to interpret the role of boundary-layer state in predicted inception behavior.

An eight-variable CST-based geometry generator was developed using physically meaningful design variables related to thickness, camber, leading-edge radius, and aft-shaping control. An initial 64-case Sobol-based exploratory population was generated and screened using geometric feasibility checks and pressure-based metrics derived from noncavitating section-pressure predictions. A best-and-diverse subset of representative candidates was then retained for deeper CFD-based comparison at a common design load of CL = 0.22.

The results show that candidate hydrofoil sections can be interpreted in three distinct but complementary ways: by their predicted inception level at the chosen common design load, by the absolute minimum of their predicted inception envelope, and by how well that envelope is centered on the desired operating condition. The study identified one custom section that performed best near the common design load, another that exhibited a lower but displaced bucket minimum, and a thicker aft-loaded contrast case that helped clarify the distinction between bucket centering and absolute inception level. Selected cavitating verification runs were used to assess how well the pressure-based inception-envelope methodology reflects actual cavitation behavior.

Overall, the thesis establishes a validated and physically interpretable exploratory design workflow for hydrofoil cavitation studies. The resulting framework provides a practical basis for identifying promising blade-section design directions and for future extension to biased second-stage searches, surrogate-assisted screening, and more extensive propeller-section or rotating-propeller analysis.

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DOI

https://doi.org/10.25777/5pg6-0c73

ISBN

9798197809353

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