CFD validation of a controllable pitch marine propeller using a truly autonomous mesh generation with adaptive mesh refinement

Summary

The design of propellers for maritime propulsion systems has a long history of using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) as result of the constant desire to improve efficiency. The complex physics in addition to the motion of the propellers pose several challenges to CFD investigations, in particular with regards to mesh generation. In view of addressing these challenges, the present work proposes an alternative approach, which employs an autonomous mesh generation based on a modified Cartesian cut-cell methodology with Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR). In this work, this approach is validated against the extensive open measurement data of the Potsdam Propeller Test Case (PPTC) from SVA Potsdam, which contains both open water tests as well as detailed transient velocity field measurements. Additionally, benefits of both steady-state and fully-moving transient approaches for propeller numerical analyses are discussed, together with a future outlook on cavitation phenomena within the presented framework.

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