Dynamic responses of elastic marine propellers in non-uniform flows

This paper focuses on the development of a three-dimensional panel method in time and frequency domains combined with the finite element method for analyzing the hydroelastic responses of rotating marine propellers in the wake of ships. A fully non-penetration boundary condition imposed on the deformed blade surface is conducted, in which the corrections of both the incoming flow velocities and the normal vectors imposed on the deformed and undeformed blade surface are taken into account. The added-mass and -damping matrices due to strongly coupled fluid-structure interaction are considered. Results of the present method are compared with experimental data available in the literature. It is observed that the fully non-penetration boundary condition applied on the deformed blade surface should be imposed to predict the unsteady performance of elastic propellers, which is due to the change of the added damping predicted by considering different non-penetration boundary conditions.