Design of the Wageningen F-series

MARIN started a Joint Industry Project (JIP) to develop a new standard series of fixed-pitch propellers (FPP) that represent contemporary propeller designs: the Wageningen F-series. The primary objective is to provide the maritime industry accurate, realistic and competitive efficiency levels balanced against common cavitation, noise and vibration requirements. The F-series will provide performance data in all four quadrants for each propeller of the series.

For each of the 150 F-series propellers a design condition was defined. The design conditions are both realistic and evenly distributed across the F-series matrix to represents typical ship types. As a design philosophy, the aim was to have a smooth input in order to achieve a smooth output as well. State-of-the-art software tools were applied in the design stage of the project. A multi-objective optimisation tool was used with the Boundary Element Method (BEM) PROCAL. The best propellers in terms of efficiency, cavitation (erosion risk), hull-pressure fluctuations, noise levels and strength of the tip-vortex cavitation were smoothed into the series.

The design of the F-series was approached as an iterative process between the supplied design input, the description and freedom of the design variables and the optimization results. The F-series geometry was designed for high efficiency and average comfort levels thereby allowing significant amount of non-erosive cavitation. Compared to the numerical B-series, the performance of the F-series is better both in efficiency, cavitation behaviour and hull excitation.

In summary, the F-series will provide realistic and competitive efficiency levels balanced against common cavitation, noise and vibration requirements. Over time, the F-series is intended to replace the B-series.