Studies About Design of Rear Stator of Ducted Propeller Using CFD

Ducted propeller designs are becoming more popular because of their high efficiency, resistance to cavitation and low radiated noise. In this paper, unsteady RANS simulations are carried out for the design of rear stators for ducted propeller to improve its hydrodynamic performance. The design of rear stator is carried out based on the wake field behind propellers. The two-dimensional airfoil modified from NACA4603 is studied to obtain the angle of attack that makes thrust on stators maximum. The analyses are performed at different angles of attack, using commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver STAR-CCM+ to solve URANS equations. URANS equations are discretized by finite volume method and solved by PISO algorithm. Simulations have been made using unstructured grid with mesh moving technique. The simulation results indicate that the total thrust coefficient and efficiency of modified ducted propeller have been improved by 7.32% and 5.72% respectively compared with the parent one. The simulation results show that the design method is reasonable and feasible.