CFD simulation on Kappel propeller with a hull wake field

Marine propellers are designed not for the open-water operation, but for the operation behind a hull due to the inhomogeneous hull wake and thrust deduction. The adaptation for the hull wake is important for the propulsive efficiency and cavitation risk especially on single-screw ships.
CFD simulations for a propeller with a hull model have showed acceptable agreement with a model test result in the thrust and torque (Larsson et al. 2010). In the current work, a measured hull wake is applied to the simulation instead of modelling a hull, because the hull geometry is mostly not available for propeller designers and the computational effort can be reduced by excluding the hull. The CFD simulation of a propeller flow with a hull wake is verified in order to use CFD as a propeller design tool.
A Kappel propeller, which is an innovative tip-modified propeller, is handled. Kappel propellers are characterized by non-planar lifting surfaces and blade tips smoothly curved towards the suction side. An accurate analysis of the Kappel propeller using CFD is important due to the more complicating blade shape than the conventional propellers.
The propeller model is verified by comparing the open-water characteristics. The hull wake field is simulated without the propeller flow to check whether it is preserved at the propeller plane or not.
Propeller flow simulations are made with mean axial wake varying only along the radius (i.e. circumferentially uniform), whole axial wake and upstream transverse wake. It is investigated how the accuracy is improved, as the wake field is modelled more precisely. The thrust variation and pressure distribution on the blade from the CFD simulation with the hull wake model are also analyzed.