Three dimensional viscous/inviscid interactive method and its application to propeller blades

A three dimensional viscous/inviscid interactive boundary layer method for predicting the effects of fluid viscosity on the performance of fully wetted propellers is presented. This method is developed by coupling a three dimensional low-order potential based panel method and a two dimensional integral boundary layer analysis method. To simplify the solution procedures, this method applies a reasonable assumption that the effects of the boundary layer along the span wise direction (radially outward for propeller blades) could be negligible compared with those along the stream wise direction (constant radius for propeller blades). One significant development of this method, compared with previous work, is to completely consider the effects of the added sources on the whole blades and wakes rather than evaluate the boundary layer effects along each strip, without interaction among strips. This method is applied to Propeller DTMB4119, Propeller NSRDC4381 and DTMB Duct II for validation. The results show good correlation with experimental measurements or RANS (ANSYS/FLUENT) results. The method is further used to develop a viscous image model for the cases of three dimensional wing blades between two parallel slip walls. An improved method for hydrofoils and propeller blades with non-zero thickness or open trailing edges is presented as well. The method in this thesis follows the idea of Pan (2009, 2011), but applies a new extension scheme, which uses second order polynomials to describe the extension edges. A improved simplified search scheme is also used to find the correct shape of the extension automatically to ensure the two conditions are satisfied.