Numerical Analysis of Surface-Piercing Propellers

Abstract

A 3-D low-order boundary element method, PROPCAV, has been extended to predict unsteady hydrodynamic forces and ventilation patterns on a surface-piercing propeller. The negative image method is used to account for the effect of the free surface. The ventilated cavity patterns at every time step is determined iteratively by satisfying both the kinematic and the dynamic boundary conditions. The detachment locations of the ventilated cavities are determined iteratively by applying a condition similar to the Villat-Brillouin smooth detachment criterion. Finally, the coupling of boundary element method with a finite element method to include hydroelastic effects is presented.