Reducing Ship Emissions With Innovations in Free Rotation Propellers

Abstract The working principle of a free rotating propeller is that the propeller rotates freely on the main propeller axis. This propeller utilizes free flow from the main propeller, thereby increasing energy efficiency. Apart from that, the free rotating propeller can also increase thrust which is useful for helping the ship’s movement and speed. The thrust produced by the propeller can be influenced by the pitch angle of the propeller. Therefore, in this research, an analysis of variations in the propeller pitch angle was carried out with the aim of determining the value of the propeller thrust force. The method used is to use computational fluid dynamic (CFD), by varying the pitch angle of the propeller. The pitch angles used are 20°, 25°, 30°, 35°, 40°. From the modeling results, the largest thrust is obtained from the free-rotating propeller with an angle of 25°, and the thrust force is 43.9872 KN.