Truck-mounted testing system design and validation for the propeller of high altitude airships

In order to get enough experimental data of propellers operating in the low Reynolds number, high Mach number flight environment, a truck-mounted testing technology which used to be applied in aerodynamic propeller test, is proposed in this paper to solve the problem. The system uses an assembled sensor balance to measure the force and torque of the propeller, and according to the trucked mounted experimental characteristic, electric generator, voltage stabilizer, anemometer and barometer were applied for supplying stable power and indicating the experimental atmospheric conditions. Due to the advantages of the LABVIEW graphical programming platform, the control and measurement process became easy and intelligent. At last, a 6.8 meter propeller model experiments were carried out for different altitudes with different atmosphere densities; results obtained from the truck mounted experiments agree fairly well with those of the numerical simulation, which verifies the accuracy of the testing system.