Numerical Investigation to Study Effect of Number of Blade in Propeller Loading with Composite Material

Abstract

In the advancement phase of science and technology, it becomes an important issue to opt for non-traditional resources to save fuel or energy. Due to increasing trend in oil price, restrictions on air pollutions, and additionally, to have more financial gains, researchers are concentrating on replacing conventional material with some other substitute material. In this paper, conventional marine propeller material is replaced by glass fiber reinforced plastic (GFRP) and carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) to investigate their effect on the blade loadings with respect to the number of blades. Here, four propellers are considered with one, two, three and four number of propeller blades for numerical investigation, and the obtained results are analysed. It may be noted here that the number of propeller blades is limited up to four keeping in mind about the increase in manufacturing cost and additionally, the blockage effect due to increased number of blades. It has been noticed that stress, strain and deflection produced are less in a GFRP propeller in comparison to those obtained for a CFRP propeller, and it gradually decreases with the increase of number of propeller blades.