Significance of Blade Element Theory in Performance Prediction of Marine Propellers

This paper illustrates the implementation of a combined momentum-bladeelementtheory for light and moderately loaded marinepropellers and highlights its relevance, when compared to other more complex procedures, for their design and analysis. For this purpose, the results obtained using the theoretical model are first validated against experimental data concerning four Wageningen B-series propellers, and then these results are compared to those found using a fully three-dimensional Navier–Stokes calculation. The reasons of the differences in the results are analyzed and discussed using theoretical arguments.