A New Method for Predicting the Steady Performance of Ducted Propeller with Stators

A new numerical method based on surface panel method was developed for predicting the steady hydrodynamic performance of ducted propeller with stators. During the calculation, the duct and stators were considered as a whole as they were motionless, and the potential on the duct and stators was solved in one matrix. The interaction between propeller and duct-stator system was computed by induced velocity iteration. Numerical results for a ducted propeller with stators show that this method agrees well with the experimental results. Compared with the traditional method that duct and stators are computed separately by the iterative induced velocity, the method presents the similar accuracy and could save much calculation time.