Design of marine propellers

Arth Patel
 Fluid machinery approach
● The fluid machinery approach treats
water as an incompressible fluid and
then uses the conservation laws to
estimate the performance of the
propeller.

● Further, to characterize the

performance, non-dimensional
parameters are used.
● Results from BET and momentum theory are also frequently used to predict
the performance of marine propellers.

● These approaches can not be used to accurately model the aerial screw
 They treat the blades as finite 2D airfoil sections.

 The aerial screw is continuous and has no definite chord.

● The aerial screw has a fairly complex geometry

 The only other practical alternative is to use CFD or experimental

analysis to characterize the aerial screw.

 Numerical approach

● A Finnish marine equipment manufacturer,

Wärtsilä, claims to have accurately modelled
and tested its propellers using the RANS
solver for CFD.
 References

● Notes on hydrodynamics – Prof. A.H Techet (MIT)

● Norbert Bulten – “Optimization of marine propeller design”, Wärtsilä

Technical Journal

● Ernesto Benini - “Significance of blade element theory in performance

prediction of marine propellers”, Ocean Engineering.
Questions ?