RANS SIMULATION OF THE PERFORMANCES OF CONTRA-ROTATING PROPELLERS

The prediction accuracy of the open-water performance and the unsteady thrusts and torques arising from the interaction between the forward and aft propellers are investigated by using different RANS modeling approaches. A computer code has been developed to generate geometries of the blades and the computational domain as well as modeling commands for the GAMBIT software, so that the geometric modeling can be done accurately and efficiently. RANS computations are carried out for a pair of four-bladed contra-rotating propellers with steady, quasi-steady, and unsteady models using the FLUENT software and the predicted performances are compared with experimental data.