Font Size: 

The relevant impact that all types of vessel emissions, including underwater noise, have been proved to have on marine fauna has become an important issue during past decade. Growing attention of the international community on environmental issues and, in particular, the requirements of the European Union on the underwater noise has recently led to a research effort to better understand and predict propeller cavitation noise. In fact, a cavitating propeller is one of the main sources of underwater noise generated by ships.

In the frame of the R&D project Elica Silenziosa, funded by Fincantieri S.p.A., Naval Vessels Business Unit, CETENA and Fincantieri are working to develop a numerical procedure for the prediction of noise radiated from ship’s propeller.

The numerical methodology is based on the use of a hydrodynamic BEM (Boundary Element Method) code to predict the propeller hydrodynamics and an acoustic BEM code to estimate the propeller far field noise levels. Different approaches have been used to evaluate the source levels due to propeller tonals and broadband contributions due to tip vortex and to the cavitation dynamics.