In this paper, a pico hydro turbine employing low head circulation water at fish farms is designed and evaluated. Due to the advantages of simple structures, small head requirements, and low-cost investment, the constant thickness propeller turbine is considered as a feasible solution. The design process based on the free vortex method is presented in full detail, and a 4-blade runner is built using BladeGen. The turbine performance is analyzed both numerically and via experimental methods. Despite slight differences, the results show similar trends between CFD simulations and experiments carried out on factory test-rigs in a wide range of working conditions. At the design flow rate, the turbine achieves the best efficiency of 70 %, generating 3.5 kW power when rotating at 420 rpm. The internal flow field, as well as the turbine's behavior, are investigated through the distribution of blade streamlines, pressure, and velocity around the runner. Moreover, the pressure coefficient on the blade surface at 3 span positions is plotted while the head loss for each simulation domain is calculated and displayed by charts.
Trawlers have to a sufficient towing force due to it's characteristics of the high performance. The newly constructed trawler with the conventional propellers shows the sufficient towing force, so that the propeller and engine are optimized. In the 1970s, many trawlers were imported from overseas by Korean fisheries industries. But the engine output degradation with year by year caused the trawlers to decrease the towing speed of the vessels. On the previous studies, the nozzle propeller had not so good efficiency with increasing of resistance in high-speed cruising operation over 15knots. But the trawling operation is just required the higher thrust and towing force, so that the nozzle propeller is very profitable for the it's effectiveness. A new nozzle propeller was designed for the 4,462G/T trawler, Dong-San, operated by Dongwon Industries Co., Ltd. to improve the towing speed, and the model tests were performed. The model ship and model propeller are preciously manufactured and used model tests in basin. The resistance test and propeller open water test were performed for the cases of the half and full loads. The required engine horse power and RPM were evaluated analytically by the speed-power curve, when the trawler was equipped with the nozzle propeller. The results of tests showed that the towing speed 4.85knots on the design load waterline requires the 200 engine RPM and 2,567ps in the delivered horsepower.