On the Accurate Calculation of Effective Wake/Application to Ducted Propellers

Abstract

A hybrid method that couples a potential flow solver with a Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) solver for calculating the effective wake of a propeller is proposed. Two improvements are addressed in this method: 1) a conservative interpolation scheme that conserves the total forces when passing information from the potential flow solver to the RANS solver; and 2) a novel option that evaluates the effective wake at the control points in the blade zone. The proposed method is first assessed in the case of an open propeller subject to uniform inflow and then applied to predict the performance of the ducted propellers under uniform inflow. The results of the numerical simulation are correlated with available experimental measurements.