Propulsive Performance Analysis of Ducted Marine Propulsors with Rotor-Stator Interaction

A ducted marine propulsor has been widely used for the thruster of underwater vehicles for protecting collision damage, increasing propulsive efficiency, and reducing cavitation. Since a single-stage ducted propulsor contains a set of rotor and stator inside an annular duct, the numerical analysis becomes extremely complex and computationally expensive. However, the accurate prediction of viscous flow past a ducted marine propulsor is essential for determining hydrodynamic forces and the propulsive performances. To analyze a ducted propulsor having rotor-stator Interaction, the present work has solved 3D incompressible RANS equations on the sliding multiblocked grid. The flow of a single stage turbine flow was simulated for code validation and time averaged pressure coefficients were compared with experiments. Good agreement was obtained. The hydrodynamic performance coefficients were also computed.