Publication

Abstract : This paper proposes an extended method for computing the performance of thin-electric propellers. Thin-electric propellers find their use very dominant in small unmanned aerial vehicles. The method proposed integrates the extended Prandtl’s lifting line theory with blade-element momentum theory to estimate the sectional aerodynamic loads of the propeller by accounting for the effect of Reynolds number. Other losses due to geometry and rotations are accounted for by various correction models. Extended lifting theory also estimates the entire load distribution over the rotating blade. The results obtained closely match the available experimental data from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign propeller database. A set of twelve thin-electric propellers was tested and reported.