A lifting surface optimization method for the design of marine propeller blades

A lifting surface optimization method is coupled with a blade alignment procedure for the design of propeller in marine applications. The method is characterized by the use of a vortex lattice discretization of the true blade mean camber surface for the determination of the optimum circulation distribution, which is found by numerically solving a variational problem. The blade mean camber surface is deformed to satisfy the kinematic boundary condition that the normal component of velocity becomes zero on that surface, in an iterative way with the optimization problem. The smooth blade geometry and the robust solution of the alignment are guaranteed by the use of a B-spline surface representation. A validation calculation is carried out for DTNSRDC propeller 4119 operating in uniform flow. A comparative study with literature for some DTNSRDC parametric propeller series is given to demonstrate the proposed algorithm for the design of propellers that have complex geometry.