Design and testing of a helicopter propeller performance

In order to develop the infrastructure (propeller performance test rig) and fulfil the requirement of University syllabus, an approach has been made to design and testing of a helicopter propeller based on the slipstream theory and blade geometry of an aerofoil for study purposes. The test rig was successfully fabricated and tested in the wind tunnel laboratory. The geometry of the propeller, the height of the blade 0.765m, Chord at root 12.8 mm, mean 13.8mm and tip 6.94mm, the thickness of the blade at root 14mm, at mean 9mm and tip 2.55mm have been chosen from the existing conventional blade. This is the in-house project and successfully carried out with small funding support from the present management of the Institution . The angle of attack from 8.2- 31 degrees has been chosen from the blade. The propeller efficiency of 78% has been achieved by conducting a series of experiments in the test rig. Since the test rig was established for conducting the student’s experiments and hence we used only a U-tube manometer connected to Pitot tube for measuring flow and maintained a constant speed of the propeller around 500 rpm. Advantage of this test rig was simple in design and operation, an absolute requirement of this test rig because of the no suppliers came forward to supply the rig for the student's experiments, reduced vibrations and very least-cost method and economics. Theoretical pressure distribution of the propeller has been studied based on the Euler energy equations by using commercial NISA compressible fluid package and results were compared with the measured results found within the acceptable limits. Presently, Aeronautical engineering branch students conducting experiments using this test rig.