Performance optimization of marine propellers

Recently a Wide Chord Tip (WCT) propeller has been developed and applied to a commercial ship by STX Offshore & Shipbuilding. It is reported that the WCT propeller significantly reduces pressure fluctuations and also ship's noise and vibration. On the sea trial, vibration magnitude in the accommodations at NCR was measured at 0.9mm/sec which is only 10% of international allowable magnitude of vibration (9mm/sec). In this paper, a design method for increasing performance of the marine propellers including the WCT propeller is suggested. It is described to maximize the performance of the propeller by adjusting expanded areas of the propeller blade. Results show that efficiency can be increased up to over 2% through the suggested design method.