Numerical Simulation of Crashback Condition of a Propeller Based on OpenFOAM

Abstract

The hydrodynamic characteristics of a propeller under the crashback condition are closely related to the crash stopping ability of a ship, which directly affect the ship navigational safety. In this paper, a numerical study on the hydrodynamic characteristics of a propeller and the flow field around the propeller under the crashback condition is conducted based on the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes solver in the open source computational fluid dynamics platform OpenFOAM. Taking the 5-blade propeller DTMB4381 model as the study object, the ahead and crashback conditions are numerically simulated. The numerical results are compared with international open model test data to validate the effectiveness of the numerical method in the prediction of the hydrodynamic characteristics of the propeller under different conditions. Based on the obtained hydrodynamic loads and flow field details, the local flow field characteristics changing with the advance velocity and the relation between the local flow fields and the global hydrodynamic forces are explored, which provides theoretical basis for the evaluation of ship crash stopping ability.

Keywords

• propeller crashback
• hydrodynamic characteristics
• computational fluid dynamics (cfd)
• openfoam
• reynolds-averaged navier-stokes (rans) method