Modeling and Analysis of a Shaft Blade for its Strength

- Fiber reinforced composites are being used by naval applications in now-a-days Propeller is the element which drives the ships and under water vechicles. They required thrust to drive the ships at its operational speed is generally provided by propeller. Propeller blades are manufactured from AL-alloy castings because of its lesser weight which offers increasing payload, performance speed and operating range at deeper depths. Increasent times to lower the weight of the propeller lead to the use of fiber reinforced multi-layer composite propeller. This work is carried on structural analysis of CFRP propeller blades which in future replaces the aluminimum propeller blade. Hydrostatic pressure is applied on both sides of the propeller blade which depends upon working depth and flow an sides of the propeller. This result in varying hydrodynamic pressure on both sides of the propeller blade. The resultant of this hydrodynamic pressure acts at its part of the blade. The propeller blade is designed in such a way that it should be able to with stand static and dynamic loads. This thesis work basically deals with the modeling and design analysis of the propeller blade of a ship for its strength. A propeller is complex 3D model geometry. Which requires high end modeling CAD software is used for generating the blade model in CATIA V5 R18. This report consists of brief details about Fiber Reinforced Plastic materials and the advantages of using composite propeller over the conventional metallic propeller. This project concentrates on the metal and composite strength analysis of the propeller blade carried out by using the finite element method. By using ANSYS14.0 software static, modal were carried out for both isotropic and orthotropic material. In this work two different types of ship propeller i. e. Aluminum, Composite, were studied using FEM techniques.