The first part of the paper presents a partitioned fluid–structure interaction (FSI) coupling for the non-uniform flow hydro-elastic analysis of highly flexible propellers in cavitating and non-cavitating conditions. The chosen fluid model is a potential flow solved with a boundary element method (BEM). The structural sub-problem has been modelled with a finite element method (FEM). In the present method, the fully partitioned framework allows one to use another flow or structural solver. An important feature of the present method is the time periodic way of solving the FSI problem. In a time periodic coupling, the coupling iterations are not performed per time step but on a periodic level, which is necessary for the present BEM–FEM coupling, but can also offer an improved convergence rate compared to a time step coupled method. Thus, it allows to solve the structural problem in the frequency domain, meaning that any transients, which slow down the convergence process, are not computed. As proposed in the method, the structural equations of motion can be solved in modal space, which allows for a model reduction by involving only a limited number of mode shapes. The second part of the paper includes a validation study on full-scale. For the full-scale validation study a purposely designed composite propeller with a diameter of 1 m has been manufactured. Also an underwater measurement set-up including a stereo camera system, remote control of the optics and illumination system has been developed. The propeller design and the underwater measurement set-up are described in the paper. During sea trials blade deflections have been measured in three different positions. A comparison between measured and calculated torque shows that the measured torque is much larger than computed. This is attributed to the differences between effective and nominal wakefields, where the latter one has been used for the calculations. To correct for the differences between measured and computed torque the calculated pressures have been amplified accordingly. In that way the deformations which have been computed with the BEM–FEM coupling for non-uniform flows became very similar to the measured results.

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A special type of fluid–structure interaction (FSI) problems are problems with periodic boundary conditions like in turbomachinery. The steady state FSI response of these problems is usually calculated with similar techniques as used for transient FSI analyses. This means that, when the fluid and structure problem are not simultaneously solved with a monolithic approach, the problem is partitioned into a fluid and structural part and that each time step coupling iterations are performed to account for strong interactions between the two sub-domains. This paper shows that a time-partitioned FSI computation can be very inefficient to compute the steady state FSI response of periodic problems. A new approach is introduced in which coupling iterations are performed on periodic level instead of per time step. The convergence behaviour can be significantly improved by implementing existing partitioned solution methods as used for time step coupling (TSC) algorithms in the time periodic coupling (TPC) framework. The new algorithm has been evaluated by comparing the convergence behaviour to TSC algorithms. It is shown that the number of fluid–structure evaluations can be considerably reduced when a TPC algorithm is applied instead of a TSC. One of the most appealing advantages of the TPC approach is that the structural problem can be solved in the frequency domain resulting in a very efficient algorithm for computing steady state FSI responses.

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Higher efficiencies, higher cavitation inception speeds and reduced acoustic signature are claimed benefits of flexible composite propellers. Analysing the hydrodynamic performance of these flexible propellers, implies that a coupled fluid-structure interaction (FSI) computation has to be performed. An FSI coupling can be monolithic, which means the equations for the fluid and structural sub-problem are merged into one set of equations and solved simultaneously. Another approach is to apply a partitioned coupling, in which the existing fluid and structural sub-problem are sequentially solved. Then, coupling iterations are performed to converge to the monolithic solution. When coupling iterations are omitted, the approach becomes a so-called loose coupling. Due to the relatively high fluid added mass, flexible propeller computations require a strong coupling including coupling iterations. Coupling iterations make these kind of computations CPU intensive and therefore it is of importance to solve the structural and fluid problem efficiently.@en

Boundary element methods (BEM) have been used for propeller hydrodynamic calculations since the 1990s. More recently, these methods are being used in combination with finite element methods (FEM) in order to calculate flexible propeller fluid–structure interaction (FSI) response. The main advantage of using BEM for flexible propeller FSI calculations is the relatively low computational demand in comparison with higher fidelity methods. However, the BEM modelling of flexible propellers is not straightforward and requires several important modelling decisions. The consequences of such modelling choices depend significantly on propeller structural behaviour and flow condition. The two dimensionless quantities that characterise structural behaviour and flow condition are the structural frequency ratio (the ratio between the lowest excitation frequency and the fundamental wet blade natural frequency) and the reduced frequency. For both, general expressions have been derived for (flexible) marine propellers. This work shows that these expressions can be effectively used to estimate the dry and wet fundamental blade frequencies and the structural frequency ratio. This last parameter and the reduced frequency of vibrating blade flows is independent of the geometrical blade scale as shown in this work. Regarding the BEM-FEM coupled analyses, it is shown that a quasi-static FEM modelling does not suffice, particularly due to the fluid-added mass and hydrodynamic damping contributions that are not negligible. It is demonstrated that approximating the hydro-elastic blade response by using closed form expressions for the fluid added mass and hydrodynamic damping terms provides reasonable results, since the structural response of flexible propellers is stiffness dominated, meaning that the importance of modelling errors in fluid added mass and hydrodynamic damping is small. Finally, it is shown that the significance of recalculating the hydrodynamic influence coefficients is relatively small. This fact might be utilized, possibly in combination with the use of the closed form expressions for fluid added mass and hydrodynamic damping contributions, to significantly reduce the computation time of flexible propeller FSI calculations@en

In the past several decades, many papers have been published on fluid–structure coupled calculations to analyse the hydro-elastic response of flexible (composite) propellers. The flow is usually modelled either by the Navier–Stokes equations or as a potential flow, by assuming an irrotational flow. Phenomena as separation of the flow, flow transition, boundary layer build-up and vorticity dynamics are not captured in a non-viscous potential flow. Nevertheless, potential flow based methods have been shown to be powerful methods to resolve the hydrodynamics of propellers. With the upcoming interest in flexible (composite) propellers, a valid question is what the consequences of the potential flow simplifications are with regard to the coupled fluid–structure analyses of these types of propellers. This question has been addressed in the following way: calculations and experiments were conducted for uniform flows only, with a propeller geometry that challenges the potential flow model due to its sensitivity to leading edge vortex separation. Calculations were performed on the undeformed propeller geometry with a Reynolds-averaged-Navier–Stokes (RANS) solver and a boundary element method (BEM). These calculations show some typical differences between the RANS and BEM results. The flexible propeller responses were predicted by coupled calculations between BEM and finite element method (FEM) and RANS and FEM. The applied methodologies are briefly described. Results obtained from both calculation methods have been compared to experimental results obtained from blade deformation measurements in a cavitation tunnel. The results show that, even for the extreme cases, promising results have been obtained with the BEM-FEM coupling. The BEM-FEM calculated responses are consistent with the RANS-FEM results.@en

The application of composite materials in marine propellers is a relatively recent innovation. Methods have been presented to analyse the hydro-elastic behaviour of these type of propellers and in some studies these methods have been validated as well. Differences between measured and predicted responses are typically explained from inaccuracies in structural or fluid modelling. It is beyond all doubt that for an accurate finite element (FE) model a correct modelling of the fibre orientations and material properties is required. Both subjects are addressed in this work. An approach is presented in order to accurately define the element dependent fibre orientations in doubly curved geometries like (marine) propeller blades. In order to improve the structural response prediction this paper presents an inverse method based on experimental and numerical results which can be used for structural identification and FE model updating. In the developed approach the residual between measurement results obtained with static experiments and results obtained with an FE model is minimized by adapting the stiffness properties in the FE calculation. This method has been successfully applied to two small scale composite propellers. The obtained material properties have been determined with a relatively high confidence level. A verification by means of measured and calculated eigenfrequencies show also that accurate results are obtained with the inverse method. Therefore, this paper gives a positive answer on the research question whether it is possible to determine the stiffness properties of small scale composite marine propeller blades from a static experimental data.

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This paper presents numerical and experimental results for the validation of a coupled Boundary Element Method (BEM)-Finite Element Method (FEM) simulation for uniform flows. In the first part of the paper the numerical models and the BEM-FEM coupling are presented. A large part of the paper is dedicated to the validation procedure which has been successfully applied to three small scale flexible propellers. Special attention has been paid to improve the accuracy of blade deformation measurements in a cavitation tunnel test setup. Results of tests on a flat plate show that accurate deformation measurements can be performed with a stereo camera system in combination with a Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique. In the last part of the paper blade deformations calculated with the BEM-FEM coupling are compared to experimental results. Depending on the flow condition a good agreement between measured and calculated blade deformations was obtained.@en