Flow simulation of a propeller in open water condition and experimental validation

摘要

This paper presents RANS computations of the flow around a conventional propeller in open water condition. It was found that the performance of the propeller is better predicted with the SST k-ω model than the k-ε Realizable model. The computed thrust and torque coefficients at various J values agreed well with the measured data especially for the prediction of K_T. Furthermore, the predicted velocity distributions at a plane downstream the propeller blade were well correlated with the PIV measurements results. The results obtained in this study are very promising and indicate that RANS codes are very useful tools to investigate the flow around marine propellers provided that a good quality grid is used and suitable turbulence model is selected.