DESIGN OF SHIP PROPELLER BY THE SYSTEMATICAL ALGORITHM AND BOUNDARY ELEMENT METHOD

Propeller is one of the main propulsors for marine vehicles which produces thrust to overcome the resistance of the ship. Propeller works in the place behind the ship where the flow is non-uniform and with three dimensional velocities, so it causes the fluctuating thrust. The first part of this paper employs the boundary element method (BEM) to evaluate and analyze the hydrodynamic performance of propeller in the behind of the ship. After calculating the hydrodynamic characteristics of the propeller, the second part is the systematical method applied to determine and select the optimum propeller. Selection of the propeller depends on the design criteria which are minimum torque, high thrust, best efficiency and without (or with minimum) cavitation. In second part of the the paper, by those criteria and having the hydrodynamic characteristics of the propeller, three types of propeller have been calculated by the BEM and then one of the best the propellers have been matched for the PV11 ship.