Optimization and experiment of composite marine propellers

This paper demonstrates the experimental result of changeable pitch propellers in composite material. The use of this composite material is to apply its characteristic of bend-twist coupling; this characteristic is applied to better performance design requirements of the propeller. Two stacking sequences are considered: the first one is a quasi isotropic sequence, while the second one is an optimum sequence obtained using a genetic algorithm. Experiments are designed considering two original propellers manufactured by the first and the second stacking sequence, respectively, and a pre-deformed propeller with the second sequence. Experimental results correspond to the same trend as the calculations and confirm the method of optimization.