Study on thrust directional steadiness of cycloidal propeller

Abstract

Unlike the normal propeller, the thrust direction of cycloidal propeller will fluctuate periodically, which will affect the steadiness. In this paper, the thrust directional steadiness of cycloidal propeller fully investigated using the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method. The CFD model was firstly validated by the experimental results in literature. After that, the thrust directional steadiness was investigated from three aspects: the fluctuation of side thrust, the temporal-spatial transient feature of the total thrust, and the motion trajectory under the total thrust. The cycloidal propeller with two common motion patterns, i.e. the so-called Voith-Schneider propeller (VSP) and Cyclorotor are studied. The results show that cycloidal propellers with Cyclorotor motion pattern have better directional steadiness than VSP motion pattern under the investigated condition, i.e. zero advance speed. Furthermore, the influence of maximum pitch angle symmetry on the thrust directional steadiness for Cyclorotor motion pattern is analyzed.