Optimum Design of Ship Propeller Using Metaheuristics and FEM

Ship's propeller is considered as a main component in the ship's propulsion system, and its optimal design and construction has always been one of the important aspects in order to reduce costs, reduce mechanical losses, minimize fuel consumption, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase the life of propulsion system parts. In this study, an optimization scheme is represented coupling an open-source parametric design and analysis tool for propellers, named as OpenProp, and a metaheuristic optimizer. The developed model, implemented in MATLAB, is used to optimize different parameters of the propeller geometry to maximize the propeller efficiency and to verify imposed limits. In this optimization process, a container ship and a suitable engine are selected to apply the optimization model to design the suitable propeller. Optimization of propeller efficiency has been done by assuming constant thrust force, constant vessel speed and several design constraints such as cavitation occurrence limit, blade structural strength limit, and noise limit. Chord length, maximum thickness, number of blades, propeller diameter, hub diameter, propeller rotation speed, and rake angle and the skew angle have been considered as design variable of the optimization model. Finally, the obtained optimization results showed the effectiveness of the proposed model and optimization method