Design and analysis of surface piercing propellers

The surface piercing propellers are promising propulsors for high speed craft, already proven by many full scale applications on small racing and sports boats. This paper presents newly developed theoretical procedures for design and hydrodynamics/strength analysis of such propellers. The design procedure is based on the lifting line theory while the analysis is performed by means of the lifting surface/finite element method. These procedures are confroted with the results of a series of model experiments by which surface piercing propellers were thoroughly tested in single and twin screw configurations. This confrontation demonstrates correctness of the basic theory and practical value of the design and analysis procedures.