Proceedings of the Thirty-second (2022) International Ocean and Polar Engineering Conference
Shanghai, China, June 5–10, 2022
Copyright © 2022 by the International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE)
ISBN 978-1-880653-81-4; ISSN 1098-6189

www.isope.org

Study on Hydrodynamic Performance of a Small Eccentric Azimuth Cycloidal Propeller
Qinghao Yan1, Fugeng Li1, Xiaoshen Ning1, Weipeng Zhang1, Jian Hu1 *1College of Shipbuilding Engineering, Harbin Engineering University

Harbin,Heilongjiang, China*Corresponding Author

discrete time and space points. If one wants to study the flow structure
disturbed by cycloidal propellers, the CFD simulation is preferred(Li etal,2021). Jürgens et al(2009) investigated cavitation behaviour of Voith
Schneider propellers with the high lift profiles under the condition
bollard pull condition.Hu J et al(2020)studied the hydrodynamic
performance of cycloidal propellers under different workingconditions.Bakhtiari et al(2020)predicted the open water hydrodynamic
performance of a VSP for different propeller pitches and blade
thicknesses. Sun Z et al(2021)studied the influence of flap on thehydrodynamic performance of cycloidal propellers. The results showedthat when the flap rotated according to the anti-virtual camber law, it wasbeneficial to offset the lateral thrust, and when it rotated according to thesine law, it was helpful to improve the efficiency of the propeller at highspeed coefficient.
In this paper, a 2D model of cycloidal propellers was established, andthe accuracy of the numerical model was verified by extensive
convergence analysis. On this basis, the hydrodynamic performance ofthe cycloidal propeller with different eccentric azimuth was studied, andthe vortex superposition effect caused by the circumferential change ofeccentric point was emphasized.

ABSTRACT
Cycloidal propellers can vary thrust arbitrarily within 360° by adjusting
the eccentric point. The widening application of cycloidal propellers forships can well solve the maneuvering performance. In this paper, theCFD method based on STAR-CCM+ software was used to calculate thehydrodynamic performance of cycloidal propellers. The overlapping
grid method was used to simulate kinematics of the propeller. On thisbasis, taking the eccentric azimuth of 0°, 10°, 20°and 30°as examples,the impact of the eccentric point on the hydrodynamic performance wasstudied.

KEY

WORDS: Cycloidalperformance; eccentric azimuth.

propellers;

CFD;hydrodynamicINTRODUCTION
With the increasing demand for ship maneuverability, the studies on
cycloidal propellers has received further attention.It is utilize for shipsthat require high maneuverability, including tugs, luxury yachts ,ferries, minehunters (Jürgens et al,2007), etc.As early as the 1920 s , KirstenBoeing Propeller, the world 's first cycloidal propeller ,came out(Sachse,1926). With the widening application of cycloidal propellers,relevant theoretical and experimental studies have also been carried out.
Taniguchi (1962) proposed a quasi-steady flow theory to solve theinduced velocity on the blade. However, the extensive experimental data
(Nakonechny, 1961; Dickerson and Dobay, 1970.) show that Taniguchi's
method is inaccurate under a large eccentricity. Zhu (1982) considered
the influence of blade trajectory curve and blade rotation on induced
velocity, which greatly improved the accuracy of calculation results
under a large eccentricity.Bose(Bose and Lai,1989) carried out a large
number of experiments to measure the thrust and torque at different
advance coefficient.
The CFD method has been widely used in recent years,which is theabbreviation of computational fluid dynamics. It approximately
represents the integral and differential terms in the Navier-Stokes
equations as discrete algebraic forms, and then solves those discrete
algebraic equations by computer to obtain the numerical solution atMETHODOLOGY
Working principles
The complex motion of cycloidal propellers can be decomposed therevolution motion of the blade around the propeller disc centre and thepitch motion of the blade around its own chord centre.Working principle
diagram of cycloidal propellers shown in Fig.1.The connect line between
the chord centre of the blade and the eccentric point C is always
perpendicular to the chord line. The ratio of eccentric distance OC toorbit radius R was defined as the eccentricity e given by Eq. 1. The  isthe revolution angle,  is the angular velocity of the blade. The angle
 is the pitch angle, which can be described by Eq. 3. The pitch angularvelocity ε can be expressed by Eq. 4.
OC（1）e=R3714