Finding “green” in the hydrodynamic soup with wake-adapted propellers

Donald MacPherson
VP Technical Director
HydroComp, Inc.

What do the following have in common?

9 m lobster boat (1 x 220 kW) 23 m fireboat (2 x 575 kW)

There is very little that is obviously similar about these vessels, with operating speeds from 9 to 35+
knots, single- to quad-screw installation, and 65 kW to over 1300 kW per shaft. What they have in
common is their propeller.

They all use the same commercial model of propeller – of four blades, 0.65 EAR, segmental-style,
and constant pitch. You can find a variant of this style propeller offered by many international
propeller manufacturers, such as Michigan Wheel DynaQuad, Exalto STP-4, Hall & Stavert MY-T4,
Hawboldt HI-TRAIL 4, Rice Propulsion TITAN 4, Sound Propeller ANSWER, and Austral Propellers
AquaFoil 4, to name just a few. You will unlikely find a more widely used and broadly applicable
commercial model for propellers under 1 m diameter.

All for one, and one for all…

These propeller models are the equivalent of an “off-the-rack” suit. They are cost-effective, reflect an
established style, perform well with no odd behavior, and serve a broad market.

I own a number of “off-the rack” suits, but I also had a suit made for me in Hong Kong. It was fit
precisely to me, not to a category that I represent (i.e., 39 long), but especially for me – and it is the
most comfortable business attire I own.

What does this have to do with propellers, you may ask? Well, in the same way that a suit can be cut
and prepared for an individual, a propeller can be “custom tailored” to an individual vessel. The
process by which we design such a propeller is called “wake-adapted propeller design”.

Wake for hydrodynamicists

The term “wake” is used in a number of different ways in maritime operation, but for our purpose, we
use wake to refer to the distribution of local velocity at the stern of a ship. In short, wake is a measure
of water velocity. It is how we quantify local differences in the environment around the propeller
from vessel to vessel.

Consider the following graphic (Figure 1). This is a simplified illustration of the creation of a
boundary layer and flow vortices at the stern. You will note at point C that the free-stream velocity V
gradually reduces and becomes very small at the hull itself. This is the region where the propeller
lives, so the propeller will be seeing water that is typically somewhat slower than the free-stream
velocity (i.e., the ship’s velocity). When conducting propeller analyses, we need some measure of this
reduction of speed into the propeller, and we use the “wake fraction” coefficient to provide a figure
for the overall reduction (leading to a local “speed of advance” at the propeller).
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 Figure 1 – Water flow and boundary laer

Localized wake

In addition to the vessel’s principal boundary layer, water velocity is also affected by appendages
ahead of the propeller, such as shafting, bossings, and struts. The following graphic (Figure 2)
illustrates how appendages will create their own localized boundary layers and disturbances in the
flow.

Figure 2 – Velocity reduction due to appendages

A complete wake distribution can then be developed by plotting the velocities at the propeller plane
in color. The following graphic (Figure 3) is an example of such a plot for a twin-screw vessel. You
can easily see the boundary layers at the hull and centerline skeg, and particularly the reduction in
water velocity due to the V-struts and shafting.

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 Figure 3 – Example wake distribution

Designing a propeller for a particular wake

The data that is represented in Figure 3 is then further developed to determine averaged velocities for
each radial position (along the propeller blade). Not only are axial velocities considered, but
rotational contributions due to upward and transverse flow vectors are also taken into account. This
data is presented as a radial distribution of velocity (as shown below in Figure 4).

Axial and tangential velocities

1 0.06

0.9 0.04

0.8 0.02

0.7 0

0.6 -0.02
Va/Vs

Vt/Vs

0.5 -0.04

0.4 -0.06

0.3 -0.08

0.2 -0.1

0.1 -0.12

0 -0.14
0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1

r/R [radial position]

Figure 4 – Average axial and tangential velocities

Design calculations

Using specialized software, a custom propeller can then be designed to match the unique inflow
properties of the vessel. In other words, you can have a propeller “custom tailored” to fit, or “wake-
adapted”. Such software is able to consider axial and tangential inflow properties, and offer
optimized distributions of pitch and camber for prescribed foil characteristics. Of course, the

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propeller design process would also take into account blade strength, tip and hub loading, and
cavitation.

So how much “green” might we achieve with an optimized wake-adapted custom propeller? The
following example is for the propeller design of a twin-screw vessel using the axial and tangential
distributions shown in Figure 4 above. The original propeller was of the stock characteristics
described at the beginning of this article, with a prescribed camber (of the flat-faced segmental
design) and constant pitch. The newly optimized propeller offered variable camber and pitch to better
match the wake, as shown in the plot below (Figure 5).

Optimized pitch and camber distributions

1 0.12

0.9 0.1

0.8 0.08
P/D

F/C
0.7 0.06

0.6 0.04

0.5 0.02

0.4 0
0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1

r/R [radial position]

Figure 5 – Optimized pitch and camber distributions

A comparative summary between the original and optimized propeller (Table 1) indicates a power
reduction and efficiency gain of more than 6%, just by better matching the propeller to the wake.

Va/Vs
J KT KQ CT CP EFFY
[nominal]

Original 0.6475 0.6327 0.1247 0.02260 0.3325 0.3876 0.5555

Optimized 0.6475 0.6327 0.1247 0.02217 0.3325 0.3647 0.5904

Table 1 – Original versus optimized performance

Other potential design benefits that could be attained with a wake-adapted propeller design tool
include unloading the tip (i.e., reducing the pitch into the tip) to mitigate potential noise and vibration
problems, and evaluating changes in the outline (chord distribution) for even better performance.
(These example calculations were conducted using HydroComp’s Propeller Design and Analysis
software.)

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Summary

As custom-tailored suits offer greater comfort and better fit, a wake-adapted propeller can provide a
variety of performance benefits. Improvements in efficiency of 5% or more are common (as
compared to stock propellers), with the side benefit for reductions in noise and vibration.

We can continue to expect engine power densities to grow; fuel costs to rise; and emission reduction
become more urgent. With more propeller builders now capable of manufacturing propellers made to
order – many fully CNC milled – custom propellers of wake-adapted design should be considered for
new construction and repowers.

About the author

Celebrating its 25th year of operation in 2009, HydroComp provides software and services for the
performance analysis and design of marine vehicles to industry, research, academic, and government
clients. Donald MacPherson has been HydroComp’s Technical Director since its inception. He is the
author of numerous technical papers and presentations on applied hydrodynamics, is Instructor of
Naval Architecture at the University of New Hampshire, and is a member of SNAME’s H8
Propellers panel.