Unsteady forces on counter-rotating propeller blades

Abstract

Unsteady forces experienced by counter-rotating propeller blades are examined in this paper. A fully coupled vortex lattice model of counter-rotation is used to obtain a quasi-steady solution to the propeller loadings, and an unsteady Sears (1941) analysis provides an estimate of the unsteady loads from the quasi-steady results. The vortex lattice method predicts the overall performance of counter-rotation well, based on comparisons of measured and predicted results. The effects of propeller spacing and blade number on the unsteady loadings are investigated. The peak-to-peak variation about the mean of the unsteady loads on the rear propeller varied from 9 percent for a 2 x 2 counter-rotation system to 2 percent for an 8 x 8 system.