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When operated under large water immersion, surface piercing propellers are prone to be in heavy load conditions. To improve the hydrodynamic performance of the surface piercing propellers, engineers usually artificially ventilate the blades by equipping a vent pipe in front of the propeller disc. In this paper, the influence of artificial ventilation on the hydrodynamic performance of surface piercing propellers under full immersion conditions was investigated using the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method. The numerical results suggest that the effect of artificial ventilation on the pressure distribution on the blades decreases along the radial direction. And at low advancing speed, the thrust, torque as well as the efficiency of the propeller are smaller than those without ventilation. However, with the increase of the advancing speed, the efficiency of the propeller rapidly increases and can be greater than the without-ventilation case. The numerical results demonstrates the effectiveness of the artificial ventilation approach for improving the hydrodynamic performance of the surface piercing propellers for high speed planning crafts.

The mean water surface (interface) under the air cushion of a surface effect ship (SES) or an air cushion supported platform (ACSP) is generally lower than the outside water surface due to the overpressure of the air cushion. To precisely analyze the hydrodynamics under the air cushion, multiple water levels should be considered in numerical models. However, when using free surface Green’s functions as numerical methods, the water level difference cannot be taken into account, because free surface Green’s functions normally require users to set in the whole water domain a unique datum water surface that completely separates the air domain and the water domain. To overcome this difficulty, a multi-domain approach is incorporated into a 2.5D method that is based on a time domain free surface Green’s function with viscous dissipation effects in this paper. In the novel multi-domain 2.5D method, the water domain is partitioned into inner and outer domains, and the interface is located in the inner domain while the outside water surface is placed in the outer domain. In each domain there exists only one unique water level, while water levels in different domains are allowed to be different. Benefited from this characteristic, the multi-domain 2.5D method is able to precisely consider the water level difference and its influence on hydrodynamics. The newly proposed multi-domain 2.5D method is employed to predict the hydrodynamics of an SES, and it is confirmed that the multi-domain 2.5D method can give better numerical results than the single-domain one for the given case.

The Partial Air Cushion Supported Catamaran (PACSCAT) is an innovative design which combines both the characteristics of hovercraft and catamaran. Further, it provides a high-speed and efficient solution with excellent performance, particularly for shallow water. In this paper, experimental and numerical method are carried out for research of motion attitude and resistance characteristics, which provide a reference for further research and hull optimization work. By model towing test and data interpretation, and the resistance, trim, and heave varying law with increasing speed is summarized. From the view of total resistance, the impacts of the cushion pressure and air flow on resistance performance of PACSCAT are analyzed. Based on the theory of viscous fluid mechanics, a numerical simulation method with high prediction accuracy is established. The flow field around and inside the hull is simulated, the simulating results show good agreements with the testing data. Finally, the effect of the cushion compartment improving the resistance performance is studied. The results show that the cushion compartment is significant for adjusting the pressure distribution of the air cushion. And the average resistance reduction ratio at the high-speed segment can even reach 22%.

The transmission of water waves under vertical thin plates, e.g., offshore floating breakwaters, oscillating water column wave energy converters, and so on, is a crucial feature that dominates the hydrodynamic performance of marine devices. In this paper, the analytical solution to the transmission of water waves under multiple 2D vertical thin plates is firstly derived based on the linear potential theory. The influences of relevant parameters on the wave transmission are discussed, which include the number of plates, the draft of plates, the distance between plates and the water depth. The analytical results suggest that the transmission of progressive waves gradually weakens with the growth of the number and draft of plates, and under the conditions of given number and draft of plates, the distribution of plates has significant influence on the transmission of progressive waves. The results of this paper contribute to the understanding of the transmission of water waves under multiple vertical thin plates, as well as the suggestion on optimal design of complex marine devices, such as a floating breakwater with multiple plates.