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ObjectiveThis paper aims to suppress the adverse effects of tip clearance flow on the hydrodynamic performance and unsteady excitation force of a pump-jet propulsor. MethodAs for the pre-swirl stator pump-jet propulsor, an annular flexible seal structure closely matched with a rotor tip ring is used to study the validity of suppressing the clearance flow on the rotor tip. The rotor thrust and torque of the propulsor are measured by keeping the shroud approximately rigidly fixed, enabling the rotor open water efficiency to be obtained. In addition, the point of cavitation inception at each design condition is observed and recorded carefully with the help of a high-power stroboscope, and the cavitation inception curves of the propulsor with/without tip clearance are obtained through calculation. Finally, tests of shaft vibration acceleration on the pump-jet propulsor with/without tip clearance are conducted under conditions of cavitation and non-cavitation in order to evaluate the effects of diminishing tip clearance. ResultsThe results show that the thrust and torque of the rotor of the pump-jet propulsor with a flexible seal structure are significantly increased, which in turn renders open water efficiency significantly increased at low and medium advance coefficients, unchanged near the design point and slightly decreased at the high advance coefficient. Moreover, the cavitation performance of the pump-jet propulsor without clearance is better at a wide range of advance coefficient, 0.85

Three different models,k-ω,DES and LES,are conducted in the analysis of the tip vortex flow field. In order to reduce the discrete error induced by the grid,mesh refinement is applied to the area of the tip vortex core in numerical simulations. The axis and tangential velocities of the tip vortex flow field with no cavitation are calculated,and the calculated velocities agree well with the experimental results. On the basis of this process,the influence of vortex roll-up on the tip vortex pressure filed is discussed,and bubble static equilibrium is proposed by which the tip vortex cavitation inception number is computed.