For the propeller material, manganese or aluminum bronze have been generally used for many years. In recent years, these bronze propellers have been often suffered from corrosion due to polluted sea water and damaged by cavitation-erosion in high-speed ships mainly. In order to overcome this matter, it has required to develop new material which has excellent resistance of corrosion and cavitation-erosion, and high mechanical and corrosion fatigue strength for marine propellers.
To cope with this situation, comprehensive research work has been carried out on the various stainless steel and found the new stainless steel called KS-2 which can surely meet the requirement to advanced material for marine propellers.
In this report, various properties of KS-2, such as resistance of corrosion and cavitation-erosion, mechanical property, weldability and corrosion fatigue strength are described with test results on an actual blade. In addition, the result on a propeller in an actual ship test is also included.