Fluid–structure interaction analysis of flexible composite marine propellers

Rotating composite beams and blades have a wide range of applications in various engineering structures such as wind turbines, industrial fans, and steam turbines. Therefore, proper understanding of such structures is of a great importance. As a result, the behavior of rotating composite beam structures has received a lot of attention. This paper presents a comprehensive review of scholarly articles about rotating composite beams as published in the past decades. The review addresses analytical, semi-analytical and numerical studies dealing with dynamical problems involving adaptive/smart/intelligent materials (e.g. piezoelectric materials, electrorheological fluids, shape memory alloys, etc.), damping and vibration control, advanced composite materials (e.g. functionally graded materials and nanocomposites), complicating effects and loadings (e.g. added mass, tapered beams, initial curve and twist, etc.), and experimental methods. Moreover, the influence of Vlasov or restrained warping, out-of-plane warping, transverse shear, arbitrary cross-sectional geometry, trapeze phenomena, swept tip, size-dependent effect, as well as other areas that have been considered in research, are reviewed in depth. The review concludes with a presentation of the remaining challenges and future research needs.

Dynamics, vibration and control of rotating composite beams and blades: A critical review

Time-dependent hydroelastic analysis of cavitating propulsors

The structural response of a rectangular cantilevered flexible hydrofoil submitted to various flow regimes is analyzed through an original experiment carried out in a hydrodynamic tunnel at a Reynolds number of 0.75 × 10 6 . The experiment considers static and transient regimes. The latter consists of transient pitching motions at low and fast pitching velocities. The experiments are also performed for cavitating flow. The structural response is analyzed through the measurement of the free foil tip section displacement using a high speed video camera and surface velocity vibrations using a laser doppler vibrometer. In non cavitating flows, it is shown that the structural response is linked to the hydrodynamic loading, which is governed by viscous effects such as laminar to turbulent transition induced by Laminar Separation Bubble (LSB), and stall. It is also observed that the foil elastic displacement depends strongly on the pitching velocity. Large overshoots and hysteresis effect are observed as the pitching velocity increases. Cavitation induces a large increase of the vibration level due to hydrodynamic loading unsteadiness and change of modal response for specific frequencies. The experimental results presented in this paper will help to develop high fidelity fluid–structure interaction models in naval applications.

/pdf/an-experimental-analysis-of-fluid-structure-interaction-on-a-23m661qwyc.pdf

An experimental analysis of fluid structure interaction on a flexible hydrofoil in various flow regimes including cavitating flow

Fluid-structure interaction analysis of flexible turbomachinery

A finite-element method coupled with analysis of a noncavitating lifting surface was used to assess the performance of a marine propeller, including the thrust, torque, efficiency coefficients, and deflections. The formulation used displacements as unknowns in the structural part and the strength of the vortex as unknowns in the fluid part. A coupled matrix derived from the Bernoulli equation and hydrostatic pressure in terms of the strength, of the vortex enforced coupling between the fluid and the structure. The resulting matrix equation was unsymmetric and nonlinear; a Newton-Raphson procedure was used to solve this equation. The numerical results were compared with test data; computed and measured values agreed satisfactorily. We also investigated the effect of blade thickness on the performance and strength of the propeller. We did not consider the fatigue strengh of the propeller in this analysis.

Jiunn-Jyi Lin

Papers

Nonlinear hydroelastic behavior of propellers using a finite-element method and lifting surface theory