The hydroelastic analysis of marine propellers considering the effect of the shaft: Theory and experiment

At present, although there are a large number of studies on the hydroelastic analysis of ship propellers, almost all of them neglect the shaft, thus ignoring the influence of the structural coupling effect between the propeller and the shaft. Therefore, considering this coupling effect, a new hydrodynamic analysis model of propellers is established by using the boundary element method (BEM) coupled finite element method (FEM). And then the model is verified by some experiments on the water tunnel test bench. Finally, based on this model, the influence of the structural coupling effect on propellers' hydroelastic performance is mainly studied. The results show that when the structural coupling effect is ignored, the relative errors of the first-order jellyfish mode of the blade, the dynamic stress at the blade root, and the longitudinal bearing force of the propeller are as high as 22.78%, 28.04%, and 20.37% respectively. Therefore, the structural coupling effect between the propeller and the shaft should be considered when analyzing the propellers’ hydroelastic response. Further, when designing the propeller-shaft system, this coupling effect can also be fully utilized to reasonably match the parameters of the propeller and the shaft to optimize the hydroelastic performance of propellers. •There is an obvious structural coupling effect between the propeller and the shaft.•This coupling effect will change the resonant frequency and dynamic stress of propellers.•This coupling effect will also change the bearing forces of propellers.