Ship maneuvering is a very complex hydrodynamic problem, involving the hydrodynamic performance of hull, propeller and rudder. In the present study, the KP505 propeller and the rudder with NACA0018 section are adopted to study the propeller-rudder interaction in the ship maneuvering. The solver, pimpleDyMFoam in open source platform OpenFOAM, is used to predict the hydrodynamic characteristics of the model propeller and rudder. The mesh independency and time step convergence are performed to ensure the reliability of the numerical calculations. To perform the simulations on the propeller-rudder interaction quickly, a solver based on pimpleDyMFoam is independently developed by introducing three body force models including uniform thrust distribution, H-O distribution and blade element theory. In the numerical simulations, the advance ratio of propeller is design advance ratio, J=0.7 and the angles of rudder are 0°. The predicted results by using body force models are compared with the results for the model propeller. It is found that the propeller-rudder interaction can be better captured by using blade element theory.
