Numerical simulation of shrouded propellers

A numerical model was developed for the evaluation of the performance characteristics of a shrouded propeller. Using this model, a computational study was carried out to investigate the feasibility of improving the aerodynamic performance of a propeller by encasing it in a shroud. The propeller blade was modeled by a segmented bound vortex positioned along the span of the blade at its quarter-chord-line. The shroud was modeled by a number of discrete vortex rings. Due to the mutual dependence of shroud and propeller vortex strengths and the propeller vortex wake an iterative scheme was employed. Three shroud configurations were considered: a cylindrical and two conical shrouds. The computed performance of the shrouded propeller was compared with that of a free propeller of identical propeller geometry. The numerical results indicated that the cylindrical shroud outperformed the conical shroud configurations for the cases considered. Furthermore, when compared to the free propeller performance, the cylindrical shroud showed a considerable performance enhancement over the free propeller. However, the improvements were found to decrease with an increase in the advance ratio and to virtually diminish at advance ratios of about 2.5.