High- and Low-Fidelity Investigations of Flexible Propeller Blades

摘要

High- and low-fidelity fluid-structure interaction analyses of flexible propeller blades are compared in this paper. High-fidelity fluid-structure interaction analysis are performed using coupled computational fluid dynamics and computational structural dynamics commercial codes, whereas low-fidelity analysis are based on coupled extended blade element momentum model and nonlinear beam theory. Three selected flexible propeller blade geometries are analyzed: straight, backward swept, and forward swept blades. The backward swept and forward swept blades are designed to emphasize the influence of the blade flexibility on the blade performance. A straight blade was selected in order to serve as a reference. In the course of the study, integral thrust and breaking power as well as their respective distributions along the blades are compared at different advancing ratios. Blade deflections are also analyzed.