3.

LITERATURE SURVEY

3.1 W A TERJET PROPUL SION BACKGROUND Vessels throughout history have used various methods to provide forward motion. Sail along with oars and paddles were the main sources of propulsion before the invention of steam ships in the 1800s. Other methods have been developed in the last two centuries that include the screw propeller, the azimuth thrusters and the waterjet. Each of the methods has their advantages over the others and therefore more favoured to certain applications. The advantages of waterjet propulsion are explained by Hamilton Waterjets (2007) to be: Shallow draft Waterjet intakes are flush with the hull of the vessel therefore allowing the vessel to operate in shallow areas with reduced risk of damage to the jet. Safety As the impeller of the jet is totally enclosed the risks when operating around people are very low. Low cavitation At high speeds a waterjet is less likely to cavitate than the conventional screw propeller making them more efficient. Waterjet propulsion is widely regarded for use in high speed vessels. As they do not have the tendency to cavitate like a screw propeller at higher speeds, nominally 30+ knots. Commercial vessels that predominately use waterjet propulsion as their main source of propulsion are high speed ferries.

3.2 W A TERJET PROPUL SION T RADITIONAL U SES . In personal water craft (PWC) waterjets are the only source of propulsion and the majority of the general public would identify a waterjet with a PWC and not particularly with any other type of vessel. The fact is that in commercial vessels waterjets are widely used where their advantages provide good reason for their installations. In the high speed ferry industry they are used not only because they can provide good power to weight but also because they give the advantage of high speed efficiency. Other commercial vessels to use waterjets as propulsion are offshore support vessels that service floating and fixed structures within the offshore Oil and Gas industry. These types of vessels often prefer waterjets as propulsion as it gives the vessel flexibility and safety when working around shallow pipe lines and cables as well as providing the capability of high speed transfer of personnel and supplies to and from the structures (Carlton, 2007).

Waterjets are usually only used at high speeds; this is because they generally possess low efficiencies at low speeds compared to other propulsion options. Vessels will only use jet propulsion at low speeds if one of their advantages, such as providing shallow draft or high manoeuvrability, is more important than the efficiency. An example of this is the use of waterjet propulsion in the Swedish Navy Visby class corvettes (Technology, 2009) where the decision was made to use waterjet as its main source of
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propulsion for two reasons. The first being that waterjets provide greater stealth for the vessel as the noise signature of a waterjet is a lot harder to detect than that of a conventional screw propeller and the second being that the waterjet provided a reduction of draft of approximately 1 meter over a screw propeller design. Throughout the research for this project a vessel in which it was designed for speeds below 20 knots was not located where it had selected waterjet propulsion as its main source of propulsion based purely for its efficiency.

3.3 D IAMETER MATCHING NOZZLE TO JET EFFICIENC Y . Has jet speed to vessel speed matching been investigated

The literature that has been reviewed for this project is not decisive in the approaches into how to match a jets exit velocity to that of the vessel. The research certainly did not uncover a step by step process which should be followed to optimise a jet to match a vessel of certain particulars. The research that includes most of the necessary theory and formulas in regards to optimising a waterjet is that of Bulten (2006). The thesis is based around a waterjet of similar shape to that of the DOEN DJ 60. This means that some of the assumptions and values used throughout the thesis are relevant to this project but some of the information needed to complete the calculations, i.e. the pump curve, is not available for the DJ 60 waterjet. Bulten (2006) uses the overall propulsive efficiency graphed against the JVR to determine the optimum operating point for the jet system. In calculating the propulsions overall efficiency in his thesis, Bulten(2006) used several parameters that were not are not available in this project, which were the thrust deduction factor (t), wake fraction (w) of the vessel, the pump efficiency which uses pump head. To be able to use Bultens (2006) method the missing values will need to be estimated for the Greenliner and the DJ60 jet. Bulten states that generally for waterjets the optimum JVR lies within the 0.5 -0.7 range.

To optimise the DJ60 waterjet, the flow rate of the initial setup was needed. It was decided the simplest way of measuring this flow rate was to traverse a pitot tube across the jet stream to find the differences in static and dynamic pressure. This then gave a velocity of the stream which was used to obtain the flow rate of the jet. Brander and Walker (2007) investigated jet intake velocities and pressure distributions using a pitot tube. This research investigated several different Inlet Velocity Ratios (IVR) to try and obtain the different phenomenon which are present in the jet at various IVRs. This paper does not state which IVRs are commonly the most efficient but it does state that typically large high speed craft cruise at IVR values between 1.5 and 2.3 implying that this could be the most efficient range of IVR values. The Inlet velocity ratio defined in their paper is the free stream velocity divided by the mean jet exit velocity.

A third method of obtaining the jet velocity and therefore the mass flow rate was considered. This method was to use to Brandners (2007) pump face axial velocity distributions along with the
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measured velocities to establish the mass flow rate. Brandners research showed that the IVR of a jet varied the velocity distributions greatly. An example of the pressure mapping is shown in Figure 2. The mapping showed that the velocity in the bottom half of the intake was greater than that of the upper half of the intake. The five pressure maps at various IVRs were compared to the measured velocities shown in Figure 17. A relationship between the pressure mappings and the measured velocities did not exist as the velocities measured through the majority of the jet were symmetrical between the upper and lower sections. This factored into the decision not to use the mappings as a way to estimate the mass flow rate of the jet. The major reason in not using the mappings as an estimation method was because the pressure mappings were all modelled in the Cavitation tunnel. In the tunnel an inlet velocity ratio could be simulated by forcing water into the jet. Whereas the IVR for the measured velocities in this project were infinite as the vessel was moored stationary for the testing. This would cause the pressures within the jet intake to differ largely as the water is being speed up from stationary. It was decided that it was unknown how Brandners(2007) pressure mappings would correlate to the DJ60 jets outlet pressures. So therefore Brandners (2007) pressure mappings were not used to estimate the jet outlet pressures. To be able to use the pressure maps as a guide to obtain the mass flow rate of the jet the velocity readings could be undertaken with the vessel travelling under its own power.

Figure 2: Pressure mapping of jet intake (Brandner, 2007)

3.4 A BOVE SURFACE VERSUS SUBMERGED JET DISCHARGE Why is surface widely used?

The reason that has been uncovered as to why surface discharge is used is the fact that Sir William Hamilton, the developer of the modern waterjet, was using submerged discharge in his initial designs and was able to achieve a modest speed of 11 miles per hour (mph). He then moved the discharge above the surface and was able to achieve 17mph of vessels speed. Sir William explained this by concluding that the drag of the jet and the pipes were eliminated by placing them above the waterline when the vessel was planing (Hamilton, 2007). In can be assumed that this hasnt been changed because predominately waterjets are used as propulsion in planning vessels where it is relatively simple to maintain the waterjet above the water at the stern of the vessel. Additionally surface discharge is preferred because of the drag created by the low pressure region explained in section 3.5.
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This means by keeping the discharge location above the surface it eliminates the issue of a low pressure region causing drag upon the hull.

3.5 O PTIMUM JET DISCHA RGE LOCATIO N TO RE DUCE VE SSEL DR AG . No research into using the low pressure region formed by the waterjet when exiting the nozzle to assist in propelling the boat forward has been found. The conclusion that has been drawn into why there hasnt been any research undertaken is that when a planing hull vessel is travelling at high speeds it would cause separation of air off the rear of the hull. This separation would create a low pressure zone as shown in Figure 3. The low pressure region created by the waterjet when discharging would be insignificant with respect to the low pressure caused by the air flow around the hull. Therefore by minimising the effect of the low pressure region created by the jet would have minimal impact on the overall drag upon the vessel. The effects would be much greater when discharging into water but as waterjets have seldom been used in displacement vessels that operate at one constant speed, this research has not evolved.

Figure 3: Low air pressure region around planing hull

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