The Anahuac propeller: A century after

Abstract

During the Mexican Revolution, engineer Juan Guillermo Villasana-López developed a special aviation propeller that he called Anáhuac, aimed at coping with the efficiency problems that contemporary propellers had on the Mexican plateau due to its high altitude. Such particular model included a radial exit border and a constant chord width at its middle length. In spite of its successful use in many Mexican airplanes, this technological development eventually vanished from the universal aeronautics literature. This work aims at re-assessing such contribution of Mexico to worldwide aviation, and further assessing its potential use in other technology areas. A comprehensive critical review of literature was carried out, as well as the building and testing of a scale model of such propeller, which was manufactured taking into account Villasana’s original patent.