Propeller Design for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle by the Lifting-line Method based on OpenProp and CFD

• Published in: Journal of marine science and application 2022-06, Vol.21 (2), p.106-114
• Main Authors: Zhang, Wencan, Wu, Lihong, Jiang, Xiangwei, Feng, Xisheng, Li, Yiping, Zeng, Junbao, Liu, Chongde
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Autonomous underwater vehicles; Computational fluid dynamics; Design; Electrical Machines and Networks; Engineering; Flow characteristics; Fluid dynamics; Geotechnical Engineering & Applied Earth Sciences; Hydrodynamics; Machinery and Machine Elements; Offshore Engineering; Power Electronics; Propellers; Propulsion; Research Article; Simulation; Underwater vehicles; Velocity
• ISSN: 1671-9433; 1993-5048
• DOI: 10.1007/s11804-022-00275-w

A high-efficiency propeller can enable a long mission duration for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). In this study, a new method with OpenProp coupled with computational fluid dynamics was developed to design a propeller for an Explorer100 AUV. The towed system simulation of the AUV was used to measure the nominal wake, and a self-propulsion simulation was used to measure the effective wake at the disc plane just in front of a propeller. Two propellers referring to the nominal wake (propeller 1) and effective wake (propeller 2) were designed with OpenProp and appended with the AUV for self-propulsion simulations, respectively. Through the numerical simulation of the AUV self-propulsion tests, the cruising velocity of AUV was obtained. The flow characteristics of the self-propulsion in pressure and velocity contours were also analyzed. The propeller designed with an effective wake improved the thrust, velocity, and efficiency by approximately 11.3%, 6.7%, and 2.5%, respectively, as compared with those with a nominal wake. The cruising velocity of the final designed propeller for the Explorer100 AUV improved by 21.8%, as compared to that of the original propeller from the AUV free-running tests.