Viscous-Inviscid Coupling Methods for Advanced Marine Propeller Applications

The paper reports the development of coupling strategies between an inviscid direct panel method and a viscous RANS method and their application to complex propeller ows. The work is motivated by the prohibitive computational cost associated to unsteady viscous flow simulations using geometrically resolved propellers to analyse the dynamics of ships in seaways. The present effort aims to combine the advantages of the two baseline methods in order to reduce the numerical effort without compromising the predictive accuracy. Accordingly, the viscous method is used to calculate the global flow field, while the inviscid method predicts the forces acting on the propeller. The corresponding reaction forces are employed as body forces to mimic the propeller influence on the viscous flow field. Examples included refer to simple verification cases for an isolated propeller blade, open-water validation simulations for a complete propeller, and more challenging investigations of a manoeuvring vessel in seaways. Reported results reveal a fair predictive agreement between the coupled approach and fully viscous simulations and display the efficiency of the coupled approach