Abstract
The design of oscillating foil propulsors is considerably
more complex than that of conventional propellers due to
the large amount of geometric and kinematic parameters
involved in the problem. No general use of such promising
propulsion concept is made routinely yet since many open
questions remain to be solved. One of such questions is
the sensitivity of the propulsor efficiency to foil chord
length that is much larger than for conventional
propellers. Our focus is on this particular problem. A
potential flow theory that estimates the main force
components affecting the global performance of such
devices is presented. The theory is applied to
oscillating foils with heaving and pitching motions and
to wheel propellers with foils describing trochoidal
paths. Added mass terms that usually are neglected in
efficiency analyses and that play an important role in
determining the global performance are included. A
parameter optimization procedure is introduced in this
context. Comparison to experimental data and RANS
computations is made.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 114-124 |
Journal | Journal of Marine Science and Technology |
Volume | 22 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Mar 2017 |
MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Funding
The authors are grateful to the support provided for the research work by the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation TEKES.
Keywords
- Added mass
- Cycloidal propellers
- Flapping foil
- Foil wheel
- Optimization
- Oscillating foil