BluNav, a French start-up, has a new idea for boat propellers. After studying humpback whales, it developed a Whale Design prop for its electric drives with the blades set on a magnetically driven inner ring.
So far, of course, traditional boat propellers have been mounted on a shaft. But BluNav likes to think outside the box. Founded in 2020, the company wants to promote electric power for recreational and commercial vessels. Recently it has taken a hybrid approach, developing its BlueSpin electric propulsion system that can be used with a boat’s original combustion engine. The BlueSpin provides silent propulsion with zero emissions, without giving up the range and power supplied by a boat’s combustion engine.
But BluNav’s designers wanted to take another step, and they studied the flippers on humpback whales. After all, they’ve been around for about 880,000 years. The flippers, it turns out, have bumps on the leading edge, called tubercles, that appear to improve hydrodynamic efficiency by channeling water flow, reducing drag and increasing lift.
They ran the tubercle idea through a series of computer tests and came up with the Whale Design. BluNav says it minimizes friction, creates less noise than a traditional prop, and requires fewer parts and less maintenance. The props also have striations on the surface to imitate the low-friction nature of a whale’s body.
BluNav will offer the Whale Design for outboard and inboard configurations on current boats, in three-, four-, or five-blade systems. It also will add the Whale Design to its own electric outboards, and start shipping new models in a few weeks.
Read more at http://blunav.com and see the video below:
