A MULTI-OBJECTIVE APPROACH FOR DETERMINING THE NUMBER OF BLADES ON A NACA MARINE PROPELLER

This paper numerically discusses how the performance of a NACA marine propeller is affected by the number of blades, which is one of the most crucial geometrical parameters determining the performance of a propeller. Results are presented in terms of the hydrodynamic and structural parameters. The results show that changing the number of blades changes the hydrodynamic efficiency, torque, thrust, cavitation behaviour and structural stiffness of the propeller nonlinearly. Furthermore, it is shown that the propellers structural lifetime is shortened by increasing the number of blades. Hence, the propeller’s number of blades is a multi-objective function and will be discussed in this research. The applied tool which is used to study the hydrodynamic performance of the propellers is a RANS-based CFD one and the FEM is considered to study the structural behaviour of the propellers