Numerical analysis of ducted propeller performance under open water test condition

This paper investigates the open water performance of the Ka-series propellers at various pitch and expanded area ratios in combination with the 19A duct by employing the panel method panMARE and the RANSE code ANSYS-CFX. An efficient method, Caly, is developed in order to generate the 3D-geometry and the surface numerical grid of the ducted propellers. Caly can be coupled with ANSYS-TurboGrid to automatically produce 3D-grids for the RANSE solver. The numerical results are compared with published experimental data and the flow details are concluded and compared. The influences that the grid resolution, the panel arrangements of duct and blade, and the flow in gap between inside wall of the duct and blade tip on the numerical results are studied. Grids verification, turbulence model dependency analysis and Reynolds number scantling are also discussed.