Optimum design of B-series marine propellers

The choice of an optimum marine propeller is one of the most important problems in naval architecture. This problem can be handled using the propeller series diagrams or regression polynomials. This paper introduces a procedure to find out the optimum characteristics of B-series marine propellers. The propeller design process is performed as a single objective function subjected to constraints imposed by cavitation, material strength and required propeller thrust. Although optimization software of commercial type can be adopted to solve the problem, the computer program that has been specially developed for this task may be more useful for its flexibility and possibility to be incorporated, as a subroutine, with the complex ship design process.