Simulation of the flow around propeller is a complex fluid flow problem, especially when the propeller is closed to free surface. In this study, the effect of immersion depth, advance velocity and the ventilation phenomenon on the performance of a B-Wageningen series propeller close to surface of water have been numerically investigated. For this purpose the ANSYS-FLUENT commercial software has been used to solve the viscous, incompressible and two phase flow field. The rotation of the propeller has been implemented using the rotating reference frame model in steady state and the sliding mesh for unsteady flow. For turbulent flow modeling and free surface simulation, the k-ω SST model and the volume of fluid method have been used, respectively. For validation of numerical results due to lack of access to experimental results of propeller close to surface, numerical solution in open water condition have been performed and performance coefficients have been calculated. Comparing the numerical results with the experiment ones, shows good agreement and confirms results of numerical simulation. The results of the numerical solution show that the submergence ratio and ventilation phenomenon affect the performance of propeller so that by reducing submergence ratio from 2.2 to 1.4 in advance ratio J=0.4, ratio of thrust and torsional moment coefficients to open water performance coefficients reduced to 7.7% and 6%, respectively.

Keywords: Propeller, Thrust, Ventilation, Volume of Fluid Method, Propeller Performance

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