Numerical Investigation Of Propeller Stall Flutter

Abstract

Aeroelastic analyses are part of design of modern propeller blades. Most of the times advanced numerical simulations are used, involving computational fluid dynamics. However, the coupling between fluid and structure is usually missing. In this paper we utilise two fluid structure interaction methods namely: a modal time-marching and a quasi-static approach. An in house method is used and different propeller designs were tested. A limited number of experiments is available and this was alleviated using new experiments as part of the Numerical and Experimental Study of Propeller Aeroelasticity (NESPA) project. Beam and 3D finite element models were used to represent the structure and time-marching and quasi-steady results were compared. It was found that regardless of the small differences in the aerodynamic loads between time-marching and quasi-static computations, the final blade deformations were comparable. Comparisons of the required power showed little differences between rigid and aeroelastic calculations. Looking at the detailed strain fields for the aeroelastic cases similar trends were observed between physical experiments and numerical simulations.