Study on hydrodynamic performance of hubless rim-driven propulsors with variable parameters

Hubless Rim-Driven Propulsor (HRDP) is a new-concept electric thruster which integrates the motor and propeller directly without intermediate transmission mechanism. As the methods for designing this kind of propeller has not been brought up yet, a CFD (computational fluid dynamics) simulation method is used in this paper. The comparison between the calculated results and the experimental results of NO.19A+Ka4-70 ducted propeller was carried out. Thus, the accuracy and application of the numerical method were thus validated. Then an improved Ka-series propeller was introduced and utilized. Finally, the effects on propeller's hydrodynamic performance of the number of blade, rake angle and pitch were analyzed.