A Numerical Design Method of Marine Propellers Using Surface Panel Method

Abstract

In this paper, a numerical method for the design of marine propellers is described. The lifting-line model discretized with the vortex lattices and the variational calculus are used to determine the optimum circulation of the propeller blades under the design requirement. According to this optimum circulation distribution, the specified type of pressure distribution on the propeller blade and the thickness of the blade section, the blade of propeller is designed by a numerical design method based on the sueface panel method. By Morino's surface panel method the performance of the designed propeller is analysed and the pitch of the designed propeller is modified to make its circulation distribution be consistent with the optimum circulation distribution. The propeller in the uniform flow and the wake adapted propeller in the circumferentially uniform flow are designed as examples.