Is building and testing an actual propeller going to be easier? I would have thought that setting up and running a simulation could be done in a moderate amount of hours, and could then be quickly iterated on. The only requirements are a laptop and an internet connection.
Building a model, on the other hand, could potentially involve a multi-year effort to re-educate yourself to learn how to build models, having to acquire hardware and materials, and setting up a lab for testing. And then building many different actual models.
Like JWST "variential dimples and bumps via hydrolic mechanisms, for optimised flow" now we have the hard part added in. (dimple flexing) and there are more levels than that.....
Trying to optimize across a bunch of different dimple/bump patterns is a great use case for CFD. However, you'd want to validate a CFD model like that against real world test data (either by running your own tests or by finding test data in the literature).
To be clear, I think adding vortex generators to boat propellers is a great idea. But to me the starting place would be a building physical propeller with vortex generators (even if they aren't the perfect vortex generators) and seeing if it has a noticeable impact on boat performance. That would justify the difficulty/time required to build a CFD model which you could use to optimize the design. (I'm saying this given that you don't have experience in CFD and it would be a large outlay of your own time to learn how to use it.)
No, that's backwards. Running a CFD simulation would involve a multi-year effort to re-educate yourself to learn how to build an accurate CFD model.
Building a physical model, on the other hand, merely requires 3D printing the desired shape, doing some sort of casting process to get that out of metal, putting it on a boat, and seeing if you get a noticeable performance impact.
How do you figure that, when the CFD software is already built and available, and the premise in the question is that that the asker is already in a position to start using it? It's pretty clear that the background of the asker is aligned with a software approach.
> Building a physical model, on the other hand, merely requires 3D printing the desired shape, doing some sort of casting process to get that out of metal, putting it on a boat, and seeing if you get a noticeable performance impact.
I love how you sneak the word "merely" in there, when for people like me, and presumably the asker, this would be a Herculean task :D
>the premise in the question is that that the asker is already in a position to start using it
That's an incorrect premise. The asker is clearly not in a position to use an off the shelf CFD package because they don't have the solid basis in fluid mechanics required to interpret the results.
I think maybe you/the asker are thinking of CFD like a tool that simulates fluids. That's not what it is. It's a set of approximations which, sometimes, are applicable to specific circumstances. Even LES, the most general tractable model, requires you to make informed assumptions about the boundary conditions.
> I love how you sneak the word "merely" in there, when for people like me, and presumably the asker, this would be a Herculean task
I'm sure building a physical prop would be challenging if you had no experience, but it is the sort of thing a lot of people can learn from Youtube and do in their garage.
Building a model, on the other hand, could potentially involve a multi-year effort to re-educate yourself to learn how to build models, having to acquire hardware and materials, and setting up a lab for testing. And then building many different actual models.