Experimental Evaluation of Hydrodynamic Characteristics of New Propulsion System Using Urethane Belt Drive

Abstract

Hydrodynamic characteristics of new propulsion system using urethane belt drive have been evaluated experimentally in this thesis. A small scale model has been developed and a BLDC motor has been used to rotate the urethane belt. In order to measure hydrodynamic forces, a load cell was used. The calibration of the load cell was done with known loads. All these processes have been controlled over by written codes at Arduino. This model was tested in an enclosed boundary (water trough) and the density of water was taken as similar as fresh water. The input power has been expressed as ampere and output thrust as newton by the Arduino module. Iterative average theory is applied here, in order to mining all the gathered data and to finding out the most approximated values at different stages of the calculations. After analyzing the experimental data, the efficiency of the model has slightly been increased up to 11.07% approximately. This increment of efficiency has been analyzed for single screw-propulsion and coupled-screw propulsion and therefore plotted as the efficiency curve. The experimental results are compared with theoretical results and found satisfactory.