Investigating the Effect of Free Surface on Hydrodynamic Performance of Propeller

Simulation of the flow around propeller is a complex fluid flow problem, especially when the propeller is close to free surface. In this study, the effect of different depths on the performance and efficiency of a B-Wageningen series close to surface of water have been numerically investigated. For this purpose the ANSYS-FLUENT commercial software has been used to solve the viscous, incompressible and two phase flow field. The rotation of the propeller has been implemented using the rotating reference frame model for steady flow and the sliding mesh for unsteady flow. For turbulent flow modeling and free surface simulation, the k-ω SST model and the volume of fluid method have been used, respectively. For validation of numerical results due to lack of access to experimental results of propeller close to surface, numerical solution in open water condition has been performed and performance coefficients have been calculated. The results of the numerical solution show that the propeller coefficient decreases at different depths with increasing forward ratios.