Fluid–structure interaction analysis of flexible composite marine propellers

Abstract There is an increasing interest in the marine industry to use composites to improve the hydrodynamic and structural performance of naval structures. Composite materials have high strength-to-weight and stiffness-to-weight ratios, and the fiber orientations can be exploited to tailor the structural deformation to reduce the load and stress variations by automatically adjusting the shape of the structure. For marine propellers, the bending–twisting coupling characteristics of anisotropic composites can be exploited to passively tailor the blade rake, skew, and pitch distributions to improve propeller performance. To fully explore the advantages of composite marine propellers, a coupled boundary element (BEM) and finite element (FEM) approach is presented to study the fluid–structure interaction of flexible composite propellers in subcavitating and cavitating flows. An overview of the formulation for both the fluid and structural models is presented. Experimental validation studies are shown for two composite propellers tested at the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWCCD). The feasibility of passive hydroelastic tailoring of composite marine propellers is discussed.