Aerodynamic design of propeller for unmanned aerial vehicles

Aerodynamic design of propeller for a solar powered unmanned aerial vehicle is accomplished in this paper. As the basis of aerodynamic design for propeller, the propeller performance prediction method is very important. By comparing several different aerodynamic theories for propellers, the strip theory based on Goldstein theory is adopted in this paper. The comparison of calculated result with the experimental data shows that, the strip theory is reliable to predict the aerodynamic performance of propeller. The key factor of the aerodynamic design is how to keep the propeller at cruise with high efficiency, under the output power restriction of the electromotor. The calculated results of the designed propeller show that at the field of entire flight envelop, the cruise efficiency of the designed propeller is about 80%, and the power used at the best cruise efficiency condition matches for the rated output power of the electromotor.