Lars Radtke, Tobias Lampe, Moustafa Abdel-Maksoud, Alexander Düster, Technische Universität Hamburg
The hydrodynanics of flexible marine propellers are investigated using a partitioned solution approach. Special emphasis is put on the coupling procedure that allows to employ separate simulation softwares for the fluid and the structural subproblem in order to solve the global fluid-structure interactionproblem. In particular, high-order finite elements are used to discretize and solve that latter, which yields the displacement of the propeller given the loads acting on its surface. These loads are obtained from the solution of the fluid subproblem, which is computed using a boundary element method (first-order panel method).
The partitioned solution approach forms the ideal basis for high-fidelity modeling approaches on the fluid and the structural side. Further developments will focus on the introduction of cavitation into the fluid solver and acoustic simulations using a third software that may participate in the coupling procedure directly or be used in a post-processing step. This allows to investigate the influence of the propeller’s shape and geometry on its acoustic signature.