Improving accuracy and efficiency of CFD predictions of propeller open water performance

Mesh and domain optimization strategies for a RANS solver to accurately and time-efficiently estimate the open water propulsive characteristics of fixed pitch propellers are proposed based on examining the effect of various mesh and computation domain parameters. A Reynolds-Averaged Navier Stokes solver is used to predict the propulsive performance of a fixed pitch propeller with varied meshing, simulation domain and setup parameters. The optimized mesh and domain size parameters were selected using Design of Experiments (DoE) methods enabling simulations to be carried out in a limited memory environment, and in a timely manner; without compromising the accuracy of results. The predicted thrust and torque for the propeller were compared to the corresponding measurements for determining the prediction accuracy