Date of Award

December 2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Mechanical Engineering

First Advisor

Clement Tang

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to experimentally investigate the performance of small-scale propellers at various angular and freestream velocities. The need for precise small-scale propeller performance data is critical in the ever-expanding world of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs). Small-diameter propellers (6 inches to 22 inches) operating at low Reynolds numbers (30,000 to 300,000) based on the propeller chord at the 75% propeller-blade station present intricate aerodynamic challenges, and their behavior at low advance ratios remains underexplored. In this research work, three APC thin electric propellers, APC 14x12E, 1712E, and 19x12E were tested. The propeller performance testing was explored under two conditions: first, with fixed RPM while varying free stream velocities a, and second, with fixed free stream velocities, while varying RPM. The propeller characteristics were measured using thrust stands inside a large-scale low-speed wind tunnel and a modular transportable testing rig. The results from this study offer insights into the performance of small propellers at low advance ratios and low Reynolds numbers. It also provides key aspects of the intricate relationship among propellers, such as angular velocity, free stream velocity, efficiency, and Reynolds number, using visual patterns and specific operational values. Propeller performance covered in this work at different angular velocities and free stream velocities at low advance ratio and low Reynolds number was explored to investigate the intricate relationship among the key propeller metrics and operational variables that tend to be narrow in the scope of current literature.

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