Numerical modeling of propeller tip flow with wake sheet roll-up by B-spline higher-order panel method

Abstract

A numerical model for the analysis of the marine propeller including wake alignment is presented. We apply a higher-order panel method, which is based on a B-spline representation for both generations of the pro-peller geometry and representing the hydrodynamic solutions, to make a modeling of the nonlinear wake including its alignment procedure to ultimately predict the flow around the propeller blades. The present model is validated by comparison of the existing experimental results. Predicted forces, wake, and tip vortex trajectories show good agreement with the experimental measurements. The results indicate that the present method are well-able to predict the improved pressure distributions on the blade surface, especially close to the tip and trailing edge regions that are currently inaccessible with other methods.