Composite Propellers-Fluid-Structure Interaction

With the ship toward the large-scale and high-speed trends, theconventional ship propulsion device—propeller, is also proposedincreasing demands. Various kinds of new material propellers havedeveloped due to the fact that conventional materials propellers oftensuffer from a wide range of issues such as noise, corrosion and fatigue life.However, the fluid-structure interaction characteristics for such newmaterial propellers have become one important factor because of materialproperty changes.On the basis of reviewing and summarizing the recent researchprogress of this subject, the fluid-structure interaction of marine propellers.The following work has been carried out:A numerical method is presented for three-dimensionalfluid-structure interaction characteristics of marine propellers where thethree-dimensional flow field under the open water condition is simulatedby RANS equations, while the structure response is analyzed by the finiteelement method. Such a three-dimensional coupling simulation isaccomplished by use of a two-way technique with the on-line transmissionbetween fluid load and structure response data in the commercial softwareANSYS.The four different turbulent models are chosen to numerically simulate and analyze the thrust and torque coefficients, as well as the openwater efficiency for a pitch propeller with five blades made of thenikel-aluminum-bronze alloy, it shows that the numerical results based onthe RNG k-εmodel have better accuracy with the experimental ones.The fluid-structure interaction characteristics are considered for sucha pitch propeller under the cases of three different materials, including thenickel-aluminum-bronze alloy, glass and resin fibres respectively. Resultsshow that the fluid-structure interaction has small influence on thehydrodynamic and structure response performances of the propellerconsisting of the nickel-aluminum-bronze alloy, however there areremarkable influence of the fluid-structure interaction on thehydrodynamic and structure response performances of the propellerconsisting of fiber materials, including the thrust and torque coefficients,the open water efficiency and flow field, as well as the stress and straindistributions on the propeller blades.Moreover, the fluid-structure interaction characteristics arenumerically simulated and analyzed for such a pitch propeller under thecases of composites with three different stacking sequences. Results showthat the fluid-structure interaction has small influence on the open waterperformance, however has remarkable influence on the structure responsecharacteristics and the wake field of the propeller under different laminatedsequences and angle combinations, and hence it is of importance to selectappropriate laminated sequences and angle combinations for the compositepropeller design.