21st Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Melbourne, Australia, 13-18 September, 1998
Paper ICAS-98-5.10.1

A COMPARISON OF THREE TECHNIQUES FOR THE PREDICTION OF ISOLATED PROPELLER PERFORMANCE

van Bronswijk N., Gibbens P.W.
University of Sydney, Australia

Keywords: techniques, prediction, isolated propeller, performance

Strip theory, blade element, and free-wake techniques have been used to analyse the performance of an isolated propeller. Their capabilities have been assessed for a range of flight conditions. The techniques have been compared on the basis of their agreement relative to each other and to published data, as well as ease of application, ability to model in plane forces and moments, ability to analyse flow upstream or downstream of the propeller disc, and computational efficiency. The blade element technique has been shown to give the best compromise, combining fast solution time with reasonable thrust and torque coefficient prediction. In addition, it has the ability to model forces and moments in the plane of the propeller disc, and the potential to empirically approximate the wake dependant force and moment coefficient increments on the wing and tail aerodynamic surfaces.

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