Computational and experimental methods were used to study a propeller coated with hydrophobic material and a propeller with a conventional surface for comparison. In CFD simulations, the blade surface mesh was arranged in a way to set non-slip or free slip wall boundary conditions with different proportions to define the level of surface slip. The conventional and the hydrophobic material propellers defined by different surface slip rates were simulated under different advance speed coefficients and different rotational speeds. Propeller performance results, blade pressure, and the Liutex vorticity distribution were studied. An experimental platform was established to study the velocity field around the propeller using a Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) device. The CFD calculation results were compared with the PIV results. It was found that the calculation results using a 75% surface slip rate were closer to the experimental results. The calculation results show that the propeller coated with hydrophobic material has improved thrust and efficiency compared with the propeller with conventional material. The hydrophobic material can significantly reduce the low-speed region downstream of the propeller hub. The hub and the tip vortices shown by the Liutex are also significantly reduced. Those changes help to improve the propulsion efficiency.

The resistance of a large Pure Car Truck Carrier (PCTC) with a bulbous bow and a transom stern is evaluated in the present paper. Several cases at nine different ship speeds in calm water are simulated and results are compared with the experimental measurements. The maximum relative error is 0.93% at a Froude number (Fr) of 0.209. The total resistance coefficient of the ship in calm water shows a parabolic trend with increasing Fr, and it reaches a minimum value at Fr = 0.1794. Furthermore, the cases of the ship in regular waves with six different wavelengths and three wave heights are simulated. It is observed that the total resistance exhibits a quadratic relationship with the wavelength when the wave height is fixed. The wave-making resistance increases with the increase in wave height at any fixed wavelength, and it reaches a maximum value when the wave-length is 1.2 times the ship length (L_pp). Additionally, we also investigated the resistance in three different sea states at four different speeds. When the significant wave height of irregular waves is the same as regular waves, the wave-making resistance under irregular waves is much smaller than that of the regular waves. All of these results indicate that the bulbous bow and transom stern can reduce the wave-making and residuary resistances, which can provide a useful reference for the subsequent design and manufacturing of related ships.

The thermal performance of the propeller driver system is very important for underwater vehicles. A new kind of cylindrical heat sink is designed for a certain propeller driver system. The performances of the heat sink are analyzed, mainly using numerical methods. The thermal influences of structure parameters, such as base thickness, fins length, and fin number, are studied for the heat sink with an orthogonal experimental method. The results show that all three parameters have positive impacts on the heat dissipation of the driver. Compared with the fin numbers and the fin length, the base thickness has a relatively small impact on the working temperature of the driver. Compared to the initial design, the maximum temperature of the propeller driver drops by 22.3% with the designed novel cylindrical heat sink in the studied cases.