CFD ANALYSIS OF PROPELLER BLADE DESIGN FOR QUADROTOR

Abstract

The enhancing applications of mini UAVs and MAVs are the reason of increasing keen interest in evaluation of the power of small scale Propellers. When comparing the operating condition of small scale propeller with the propeller of aircraft, it is shown that these small scale propellers operate on the lower value of Reynolds number. As performance characteristics of propeller changes by varying the Reynold’s number, so it’s difficult to predict the propeller performance at lower value of Reynold’s number. So to analyse the effect of Reynold’s number on UAVs propeller, study of 11 in. propeller is done on FLUENT on various operating condition. It is shown by the result that there is improvement in the performance of propeller on increasing the value of Reynolds number in terms of thrust coefficient and power coefficient. Performance is also calculated in terms of propeller efficiency. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver i.e. FLUENT is used to replicate the experimental result and this software has a great computational accuracy and has good initial prediction. Although result is mesh independent, coarse mesh refinement is used along with standard k-Ɛ viscous laminar model. The Multiple Reference Frame model was used to consider the rotation of the propeller towards its local reference frame.