Composites are used in many kinds of fields such as the aircrafts, vehicles and wind turbines because they have the advantages of high strength, high rigidity, corrosion resistance and light weight compared to metal materials.
In the marine industry, composite materials have been used exclusively for ship and yacht hulls, but more recently, research has focused on applying composites to marine propellers. The widespread use of composite materials and the development of production technology have reduced production costs, so it can be said that the composite materials have great potential as marine propellers.
In this study, the author carried out mechanical tests of CFRP(Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastics) specimens that can be adopted as a new marine propeller material. Consequently, CFRP materials exhibited higher strength than NAB(Nickel Aluminum Bronze casting) which is conventionally used as material for marine propellers.
And this thesis is focused on comparison of the static analysis and vibration characteristics of CFRP propeller with NAB propeller by finite element method(FEM) using ANSYS. As a result of analysis, CFRP propeller has higher safety factor than NAB propeller under the same conditions and it is more safer from the risk of vibration engineering problem. It is also confirmed that CFRP material is a new material for propellers by reducing the weight about 80% compared to conventional NAB propellers.