Improving accuracy and efficiency of CFD predictions of propeller open water performance

摘要

Mesh and domain optimization strategies for a RANS solver to accurately and time-efficiently estimate the open water propulsive characteristics of fixed pitch propellers are proposed based on examining the effect of various mesh and computation domain parameters. A Reynolds-Averaged Navier Stokes solver is used to predict the propulsive performance of a fixed pitch propeller with varied meshing, simulation domain and setup parameters. The optimized mesh and domain size parameters were selected using Design of Experiments (DoE) methods enabling simulations to be carried out in a limited memory environment, and in a timely manner; without compromising the accuracy of results. The predicted thrust and torque for the propeller were compared to the corresponding measurements for determining the prediction accuracy. It was found that with the optimized meshing and setup arrangements, the propeller opens simulation time was reduced by at least a factor of 6 as compared to the generally popular CFD parameter setup. Also, the accuracy of propulsive characteristics was improved by up to 50% as compared to published simulation results. The methodologies presented in this paper can be similarly applied to other simulations such as calm water ship resistance, ship propulsion etc. to systematically derive the optimized meshing arrangement for simulations with minimal simulation time and maximum accuracy. This investigation was carried out using a commercial CFD package; however the findings can be applied to any RANS solver.