Hydrofoils and Propellers
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this graduate-level course on the theory and design of hydrofoil sections and marine propellers. Topics include lifting and thickness problems for sub-cavitating sections, unsteady flow, and computer-aided design of low drag cavitation-free sections. The course covers lifting line and lifting surface theory applied to hydrofoil craft, rudders, control surfaces, propellers, and wind turbine rotors, plus wake-adapted propeller design, steady and unsteady thrust and torque calculations, and wind turbine rotor performance in steady and stochastic wind. Numerical methods for vortex lattice and lifting surface panel analysis are introduced. Projects have students build computational tools for lifting, propulsion, and wind turbine flows using state-of-the-art simulation methods. Course materials include lecture notes and problem sets, free to access with no certificate offered through OCW.