Design and analysis of a composite semi-submersible propeller (with MARC & AUTOCAD 3D)

Marine Propellers of different types have been used in vessel propulsion systems. Surface Piercing Propeller or Semi submerged propellers (SPP) are today used for high-speed crafts. These propellers operate at the surface of the water for a superior performance, and thus they are subjected to severe hydrodynamic pressure. SPPs are commonly made of stainless steel materials having the required stiffness and strength to withstand the applied loads. Designing a novel composite SPP is the basic purpose of our investigation for its lower friction, no corrosion, and low detestability. The mechanical loads considered in our work are the hydrodynamic pressure, the centrifugal force, and the gravity. Through a boundary element analysis of the unsteady flow characteristics, we obtained the non-uniform distribution of the hydrodynamic pressure on the surface of the blades. The fluid dynamic analysis has been performed in an apart-related investigation, which only was presented and used its result as the input to the structural analysis of our work. In order to have a basis for the comparison, we analyzed a stainless steel propeller in addition to the composite one.