PROPELLER SIMULATION IN OPEN-WATER CONDITION WITH BKASM - A USER INTERFACE BASED ON SNAPPYHEXMESH/OPENFOAM

Abstract

A propeller is a device converting rotary energy from the piston engines into the energy of the fluid thereby creating thrust to propel vessels. For this reason, it is extremely necessary to perform analysis on hydrodynamic characteristics of propellers and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) can be considered the most sufficient way to accomplish this process. Nowadays, with the aid of the open-source software OpenFoam, researchers are allowed to carry out numerical simulations with high accuracy. To acquire this outcome, one must be aware of the importance of the meshing process. However, this procedure often requires skills and experiences from the conductors. Thus, in this paper, an automatic meshing tool utilizing snappy-HexMesh/OpenFOAM version 5.0 is introduced. As a user interface for snappyHexMesh, this tool assists researchers in open - water propeller simulations by simplifying the meshing process. The results obtained from the tool are validated by comparing with the experiment data provided by the manufacturer. From this, a conclusion can be made on the reliability of the meshing tool.