Noise measurements of a cavitating propeller in different facilities: Results of the round robin test programme

Mitigation of shipping noise is a topical issue in marine engineering because of the dramatic increase in the levels of anthropogenic underwater noise and its impact on marine life. In recent years, hydro-acoustic research has focussed on the development of reliable methods for predicting underwater radiated noise (URN) due to cavitation, which is known to be the dominant contribution to the overall radiated noise spectrum of ships above the cavitation inception threshold. Model-scale measurements are currently considered the most reliable approach to study URN problems in marine engineering and are crucial for the verification and validation of numerical methods. However, their reliability is affected by several uncertainty sources for which suitable test procedures and post-processing techniques are needed. As a means to better understand the accuracy and reliability of underwater radiated noise measurements, a round-robin (RR) test programme for an open water propeller setup was organized within the Community-of-Practice “Noise” of the HydroTesting Forum, with the aim of comparing results among several institutes (i.e. University of Genova UNIGE, University of Newcastle UNEW, NMRI, SSPA, KRISO, CNR-INM and MARIN). This paper reports an overview of the RR programme and compares the different approaches and results. •A round robin programme on model scale propeller cavitation and noise has been carried out.•The round-robin involves seven institutions with different facilities for testing model propellers.•The characteristics of the facilities, the equipment and the procedures adopted by the participants are described.•Results in terms of cavitation extent and radiated noise are reported and analysed.•Common trends and discrepancies among the participants are commented and possible explanations are investigated.