Design and Performance Analysis of Low Reynolds Number Propeller using Analytical Methods by Varying Blades Alpha Design

Abstract

In the past few years, the usage of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) aircraft has increased significantly, but the need for UAVs with higher performance is increasing also. Therefore, all systems of the UAVs must be developed to have high efficiency, including the propulsion system. It is necessary to perform some design and analysis tasks on low Reynolds number propeller, which is a commonly used propulsion system on UAVs, to have higher efficiency and improve the overall UAVs performance. In this paper, low Reynolds number propellers are designed using the Larrabee Design analytical method by referring to the "Master AirScrew 10x7E" propeller. Meanwhile, performance of the designed propellers is analysed by using analytical method of Inversing Larrabee Design method. At the design stage of low Reynolds number propeller, 42 variations of alpha design (αdes) was inputted along the blades with uniform, linear, and quadratic distributions. Furthermore, the best design from these 42 variations was selected by performing two-stage scoring. At first stage scoring, 42 designs are selected to obtain 5 designs with the highest on-design efficiency. Then, performance of these 5 selected designs are analysed analytically along a certain range of advance ratio. Finally, second stage scoring is performed to obtain 1 design with the best overall performance.