BEM–FEM coupling for the analysis of flexible propellers in non-uniform flows and validation with full-scale measurements

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...

Hydro-elastic analysis of flexible marine propellers

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...

Experimental validation of fluid–structure interaction computations of flexible composite propellers in open water conditions using BEM-FEM and RANS-FEM methods

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...

Boundary element modelling aspects for the hydro-elastic analysis of flexible marine propellers

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...

Validation of a steady BEM-FEM coupled simulation with experiments on flexible small scale propellers

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...

Finite element modelling and model updating of small scale composite propellers

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...