Study of a new type of Flettner rotor in merchant ships

Wind energy is a clean and renewable source of energy. This study seeks to explore the potential for utilising wind power for merchant ships. A new type of Flettner rotor (rotating cylinder) mounted on the superstructure of a ship is proposed and numerically simulated. The construction and installation of the rotating cylinder is designed and a numerical simulation of the ship-mounted cylinder is carried out, using the commercially available CFD code Ansys Fluent to obtain parameters such as lift and drag coefficient of the cylinder in different conditions. Specifically, it is found that the cylinder type superstructure can play a certain role in reducing the effect of friction by comparing traditional and cylindrical superstructures; the rotating cylinder can generate auxiliary thrust for the ship. After analysis, the wind speed around the cylinder and spin ratio will have a direct influence on its thrust effect; there is an inflection point in the lift coefficient with the increase of α; the thrust coefficient (8.63) reaches the maximum environmental wind speed at 10 m/s and spin ratio is 2.5. For the rotating cylinder, the greater the environmental wind, the greater the thrust contribution generated under the same spin ratio conditions. The maximum thrust can reach 750,000 N; the cylinder’s auxiliary propulsion contribution shows a better advantage in α = 2.0. The effective power generated by the cylinder reaches a maximum of 2,240 kW for environmental wind speed = 20 m/s and α = 1.0.