Prediction of loading distribution and hydrodynamic measurements for propeller blades in a rim driven thruster

This article presents an approach which employs a commercial Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) solver to predict the steady wake field and loading distributions for a rim driven thruster. Four different cases of propeller blades are chosen to be calculated with the presented method. The propeller blade radial circulation and chordwise circulation density distributions are analyzed. The maximum radial circulation is found at the blade tip, which is different from conventional shaft driven propeller. The numerical results indicate that there is no tip leakage vortex in rim driven propulors. But there exist the tip joint vortex and the root region vortex. Bollard characteristics are calculated by taking rim surface effect into account. From the predicted results the second case in this paper is selected as the final one to perform hydrodynamic experiment. The calculation results with empirical rim surface corrections are compared with the measurement. It shows that the developed numerical method can well predict hydrodynamic performances of the rim driven thruster.