Analysis of Blade Root Cavitation Erosion with an Image Processing Approach

In this paper image-processing techniques for the study of cavitation types associated with erosion of marine propellers are presented. Blade root cavitation erosion was documented on three model-scale controllable pitch propellers using a combination of soft-paint techniques and high-speed videos. Three different image processing techniques have been applied to the high-speed videos to investigate the dynamics of the cavitating structures. For each of these techniques, the relative strengths and weaknesses are presented and discussed. The results show the dynamics of the cavitating structures obtained by applying these image processing techniques and support further work to correlate the cavitation behavior with erosion damage.