Analysis of Three-Dimensional Flow around Marine Propeller by Direct Formulation of Boundary Element Method : In Uniform Flow

In recent years, the propeller's fatigue fracture at the blade's root of motorcar carriers and refrigerated cargo carriers has become an important problem awaiting to be solved. On the other hand, the use of the highly skewed propeller for the reduction of ship vibration and noise leads to the strength problem of propeller. With such technical background, an accurate method for the calculation of the pressure distribution acting on the surface of the propeller blade has been needed. This paper presents the direct formulation of boundary element method for the analysis of three-dimensional flow around the marine propeller which is expected to be a more accurate method than the lifting surface theory. The present method is applied to the analysis of flowfields around the rectangular wing, conventional propeller and highly skewed propeller. The result is compared with that of the lifting surface theory, and the usefulness of the present method is verified.