Objectives  In order to improve ship propulsion performance and efficiency, and overcome such obstacles as numerous propeller parameters, complicated modeling, slow convergence of hydrodynamic numerical calculations and turbulent wake field effects, this paper proposes an efficient propeller optimization method.

  Methods  A parameterized propeller constructed with non-uniform rational B-spline based free form deformation (NFFD) technology is used as the output. The CFD numerical simulation is applied to predict its performance characteristics and the Gaussian approximate prediction model of the propeller performance is established based on the simulation data. The optimization model aims to improve efficiency and reduce the torque coefficient by using the second-generation non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) method to obtain the optimal solution.

  Results  The results show that under the uniform flow field and wake field behind the ship, the optimization results of the propeller have similar laws; that is, the blade width and thickness of the propeller show a decreasing trend, while the inclination angle shows an increasing trend. The flow velocity decreases in the wake field behind the ship, so the reduction in width and thickness and increase in inclination angle of the propeller blade are smaller than those in the uniform flow field.

  Conclusion  The method proposed in this paper can be used to achieve the more efficient optimization design of propellers under uniform flow fields and wake fields behind ships.