A study on the efficient numerical analysis for the prediction of full-scale propeller performance using CFD

Abstract

In Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations, limited full-scale studies with ship propellers have been conducted due to the limitation of computational resources and computation time. Two methods for efficient numerical analysis of full-scale propeller performance are; (1) a method of using large dimensionless wall distances (y+) at a full scale and (2) a method of applying a virtual fluid at a model scale. Thus, the aim of this study is to investigate the effect of different wall y+ values in a real fluid and the virtual fluid concept to predict full-scale propeller performance using CFD. For these investigations, the commercial CFD tool, STAR-CCM+, was used to predict the propeller open water (POW) performance of the KCS propeller (KP505) in a model and full-scale. The findings of this research study support the use of a small value of wall y+ (i.e., y+<1) for the model scale simulations, but the effect of the wall y+ is negligible in full-scale. This study also demonstrates that the similarity requirements for the advance coefficient and Reynolds number could be satisfied simultaneously in full-scale by using the virtual fluid properties without any need to conduct more computationally demanding full-scale simulations with real fluid.