Accurate Performance Predictions for Marine Propellers

The high demand for improving the accuracy, quality, and credibility of the CFD simulation results, should be assessed by providing a qualitative and intensive comparison with experimental measurement data. The purpose of this benchmark is the validation of CFD simulation software TCFD® with the mesh created in the meshing software Pointwise® and to compare the results with the measurement data available. The thrust coefficient, torque coefficient, and efficiency were compared to the advance coefficient over eleven operating conditions.  

The final mesh consisted of 4.1 million cells. The simulated predictions for each of the coefficients as well as the efficiency were very close to experimental results across the full range of operating conditions. All simulations and post-processing were performed using TCFD; visual post-processing of volume fields can be done with ParaView.

The Potsdam propeller was accurately modeled across a broad range of operating conditions using a mesh created by Pointwise and the simulation package TCFD.