Design and performance evaluations of the propeller of a UAV

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Mühendislik Fakültesi, Makina Mühendisliği Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2015

Öğrenci: MURAT BAĞÇE

Danışman: MEHMET HALUK AKSEL

Özet:

In this study, the performances of mini aircraft propellers which are designed and prototyped by Turbotek Ltd Inc. are determined by static and dynamic tests. A propeller test apparatus is designed and assembled to evaluate the performance of propellers statically. For dynamic tests, the same apparatus is placed in the wind tunnel of Fluid Mechanics Laboratory of Mechanical Engineering Department in METU. In static tests, thrust, power and efficiencies of four different Turbotek propellers are obtained as a function of the rotational speed of the propellers. These obtained data are compared with the results of the calculated, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis and static tests results of Turbotek. In dynamic tests, the variation of the thrust coefficient, power coefficient and efficiency of these four Turbotek propellers are obtained as a function of the advance ratio. These experimental results are compared to the analytical and CFD results of Turbotek and experimental results are found to be satisfactory.