INVESTIGATION OF THE HUB DIAMETER EFFECT ON PROPELLER THRUST
Abstract
With the widespread of unmanned aerial vehicles in the aviation industry, the importance of detailed examination of propellers, whose task is to provide thrust, has also increased. A propeller is a part that is formed by attaching more than one aerodynamically shaped blade to a hub and produces thrust by being rotated by a motor. The amount of thrust that is produced by a propeller depends on some parameters such as diameter, number of blades, pitch angle etc. The aim of this study is to investigate the thrust distribution along a propeller diameter section with the gradual increase of the hub diameter. Related studies show that the maximum thrust of a propeller is obtained in the region between 75% and 85% of the propeller length. In order to obtain the necessary data, numerical flow analyzes were made and the results were discussed. As a conclusion, at the very closer to the root of the propeller blade, the amount of produced thrust is considerably low compared to the near tip of propeller. Therefore, the thrust loss due to the increase of the propeller hub diameter is negligible and maximum thrust obtained in the expected region.
Keywords
Propeller, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Hub Effect, Thrust Distribution
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