Verification of CFD Method for Meshing Analysis on the Propeller Performance with OpenFOAM

This paper inspects the capability if using the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tools to investigate the effect of free surface with marine propeller. We conducted the numerical simulation for propeller performance on the open-water test. The numerical simulations were compared the meshing strategies for the propeller. The simulations show that effect on the thrust and torque. The OpenFOAM was applied to solve the propeller problem, where open water performances of propeller (KP505) is estimated by a Reynold-average Navier-Stokes equations (RANS) solver which is using the three-dimensional unsteady incompressible viscous flow and using the turbulence of k-Omega SST. For the mesh generation, unstructure meshes used in the numerical simulation with hexahedral meshing. The Arbitrary mesh strategy (AMI) and Multiple Rotating Frame (MRF) were compared to define the best meshing. The meshing strategies were selected in 3 categories, e.g coarse, medium, and fine mesh. Thus, the propeller can be performed in the best mesh. The numerical results were validated with the experimental data. The KT, KQ, and Efficiency of the propeller were compared to an experimental result and for all of the meshing strategies. Thus, the simulations show the influence of meshing in order to perform the propeller performance.

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