The load dependent deformation responses and complex failure mechanisms of self-adaptive composite propeller blades make the design, analysis, and scaling of these structures nontrivial. The objective of this work is to investigate and verify the dynamic similarity relationships for the hydroelastic response and potential failure mechanisms of self-adaptive composite marine propellers. A fully coupled, three-dimensional boundary element method-finite element method is used to compare the model and full-scale responses of a self-adaptive composite propeller. The effects of spatially varying inflow, transient sheet cavitation, and load-dependent blade deformation are considered. Three types of scaling are discussed: Reynolds scale, Froude scale, and Mach scale. The results show that Mach scaling, which requires the model inflow speed to be the same as the full scale, will lead to discrepancies in the spatial load distributions at low speeds due to differences in Froude number, but the differences between model and full-scale results become negligible at high speeds. Thus, Mach scaling is recommended for a composite marine propeller because it allows the same material and layering scheme to be used between the model and the full scale, leading to similar 3D stress distributions, and hence similar failure mechanisms, between the model and the full scale. 1. Introduction In recent years, advanced composite materials have become an increasingly popular alternative to traditional metallic alloys for aerospace and marine applications, including rotors such as propellers and turbines. In addition to having the benefits of higher specific strength and stiffness, composites can provide improved performance over metallic alloys through exploitation of the intrinsic bend-twist coupling characteristics. The anisotropic properties of composites can be used to elastically tailor the rotor blades to achieve improved performance through passive pitch adaptation. However, the load-dependent deformation responses and complex failure mechanisms of composite blades make the design, analysis, and scaling of these structures nontrivial. Over the last two decades, much research on composite rotors focused on the utilization of fluid-structure interactions (FSI) to improve the performance of aerospace structures, notably helicopter, aircraft, and wind turbine blades [1–7]. More recently, the use of advanced composites to improve the performance of marine rotors has been demonstrated experimentally [8–10] and numerically [11–23]. It has been shown that self-adaptive composite
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