Design of High-Speed Propellers for Nonuniform Flow

Marine propellers must often operate in a spatially varying wake. Such nonuniform flow, usually referred to as the wake pattern, often leads to severe problems such as vibration and cavitation. Cavitation, in turn, can produce two serious results: loss of performance and blade damage due to cavitation erosion. Cavitation erosion is usually the more serious of the two problems.

Propellers can be designed to operate in uniform flow by presently available procedures with reasonable assurance that cavitation problems can be identified during the design stage. However, cavitation erosion problems of propellers which must operate in a nonuniform flow cannot be identified except by experimental evaluation. This paper presents the design procedures and the experimental results of a high-speed propeller designed to operate in nonuniform flow with little or no cavitation erosion.