A shape optimization pipeline for marine propellers by means of reduced order modeling techniques

In this article, we propose a shape optimization pipeline for propeller blades, applied to naval applications. The geometrical features of a blade are exploited to parametrize it, allowing to obtain deformed blades by perturbating their parameters. The optimization is performed using a genetic algorithm that exploits the computational speed-up of reduced order models to maximize the efficiency of a given propeller. A standard offline-online procedure is exploited to construct the reduced-order model. In an expensive offline phase, the full order model, which reproduces an openwater test, is set up in the open-source software Open-FOAM and the same full order setting is used to run the CFD simulations for all the deformed propellers. The collected high-fidelity snapshots and the deformed parameters are used in the online stage to build the nonintrusive reduced-order model. This article provides a proof of concept of the pipeline proposed, where the optimized propeller improves the efficiency of the original propeller.