Toroidal propellers have emerged as promising substitutes for next-generation marine propulsors due to their potential advantages in hydrodynamic efficiency and noise reduction. This study presents a cavitation analysis of toroidal propellers using a potential-based panel method. The method captures the inviscid flow around the complex toroidal geometry and predicts cavitation patterns, propulsive forces, and circulation distributions. Numerical predictions are assessed against Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes simulations and available experimental observations over a range of loading conditions and cavitation numbers. The results show that the panel method satisfactorily reproduces the features of sheet cavitation on toroidal propellers, with cavity extents and volumes in good agreement with the reference data. To address numerical instability arising from pronounced wake-blade interactions inherent to the looped geometry, a numerical fence is introduced, which significantly improves the robustness of the solution and stabilizes cavity prediction by preventing nonphysical wake-blade proximity. While cloud cavitation, cavity collapse, and associated shedding dynamics are not resolved due to the inviscid foundation, the present method provides stable and consistent cavitation predictions at substantially reduced computational cost, which makes it a practical tool for early-stage evaluation of cavitation behavior in non-conventional propeller design.
Seungnam Kim (Sun,) studied this question.