Numerical researches on interaction between propellers in uniform flow

Numerical simulations of the flow around two bidirectional staggered propellers are conducted in uniform flow. The computed open water performance of the fore-propeller is compared with the corresponding experimental results, and the influence of the fore-propeller on the aft one is carefully investigated. It is found that the inflow around the aft propeller close to the side of the fore is especially affected by the fore one, leading to abnormal circumferential distribution of force on the blade in the shade region. For either forces or velocity distributions, the abnormal changes behave contrarily for cases with the rotating speed larger or smaller than the idle. Moreover, the more the rotating speed of the fore differs from the idle, the larger the abnormal values become.