Design, Testing and Optimization of a Constant Torque Propeller

Abstract

This paper examines the viability of a passive variable pitch propeller for small aerial Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPV's) and Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS's) using a self adjusting mechanical pitch control mechanism. The work described in this paper includes the design and testing of a mechanical pitch change mechanism based on a constant torque spring for an off-the-shelf propeller. A propeller performance prediction code, based on the vortex lattice method, in combination with a genetic algorithm (GA) is used to optimize a propeller for given motor performance data. The optimization process includes results for both single point and multipoint design optimization efforts.