Georgia Institute of Technology – Mechanical Engineering Department

ME/MSE 4790: Materials Selection and Design.

Professor Richard W. Neu.
Student: Ricardo Diaz Gutierrez GTid:903537812
Material Selection and Design for Delivery Drone
Propellers
 Background Information
In our globalized world, communication and transportation have become major
challenges faced by engineers. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), widely known as
drones, combine low cost, reliable, and efficient technologies to perform flying
operations. Drones are now being considered to serve for these different purposes.
Along with this, there has been a recent surge in attempting to commercialize them
for delivery systems.

Drones are aircraft with thrust vectoring composition, they rely on the manipulation
of the motors to control altitude and angular velocity. UVAs, like any other aircraft,
can be classified in two big fields: Fixed propellers and Rotary propellers. Airplanes
and most civil transport aircraft have fixed propellers with uniaxial thrust. Drones are
widely designed as quadcopters, a sub-division of fixed propeller aircrafts.

One of the most challenging problems for UVAs is the relationship between thrust
force and power supply, the flying performance. Military and high-operation
industries can afford to pay for the design and research of drones with extreme
performance. However, for civil and industrial operations, a trade-off is the best
choice.

 Problem Description
If a Drone wants to fly high in the air, it should be able to move as much volume of
air as possible. In order to do this, drones rely on propellers for their movement.
Propellers normally experience three forces while they are flying: thrust, lift and
torque bending force, all resulting in a propulsion force. Air is pushed in the opposite
direction of the flight. Fig. 1 and 2 help us illustrate the geometry and the forces
experienced in a propeller blade.

Propellers with bigger pitch angles and longer blades can carry more lift and thrust
forces. Finding the right pitch angle for more volumetric flow is beyond the scope of
this problem. However, the larger the blade
will be, the more air it will push. So, if we
want to design a drone for a delivery
system, where more payload or propulsion
force is expected. Longer blades may be
needed in order to have better performance Propeller
Propeller width (w)

than design blades already in the market. radius (r)

Fig. 1: Propeller geometry showing pitch angle, an

important design aspect for propulsion.
Georgia Institute of Technology – Mechanical Engineering Department
ME/MSE 4790: Materials Selection and Design.
Professor Richard W. Neu.
Student: Ricardo Diaz Gutierrez GTid:903537812

Using mechanical analysis, propellers can

also be considered as thin beams
experiencing distributed bending and
tension loads. Due to their rotary
movement, tension loads are experienced
due to centrifugal forces, and they are the
domiant forces in the propellers. In resume,
we want our blades to be stiff enough to
withstand the loads during flight and to be
strong enough for not failing under extreme
external forces like air currents and impacts.

Energy is the principal problem for any

Fig. 2: Propeller forcers during motion.
vehicle, and even more in small to medium Centrifugal and bending forces are principals.
sizes. We want electrical, or potential energy
to be transformed into kinetic energy. As we know, less mass represents less energy
needed to move an object. And this is even more important for a delivery drone as
we want to design. These mean that to reduce the aircraft weight we need to have
the lightest materials as possible. An economic analysis will come later, but for this
problem energy consumption is critical.

The problem is now in selecting a material for propeller blades that is stiffer and
strong enough to withstand big payloads, with the lightest weight as possible. We
will consider for our analysis the working payload to be 10kg over all the vehicle.
What material is the best choice for this problem?

 Current materials in use

Drones are experiencing a grown in demand, where more design and research is
needed. That is why we can find a lot of information from different manufactures and
companies about their product. However, materials for propellers vary depending on
the drone application. The material for a high-speed race drone propeller will not be
the same for heavy, big payload drone. The following table contains the most used
materials for different drone applications.
Drone application Size Material used Although there is enough
Video recorder drone Small Polyurethane information about drone
Video recorder drone Medium Glass Fiber Reinforced propellers, we do not know if these
Composite materials can withstand the forces,
High speed drone Small Polycarbonate
requirements and objectives that
Enhance Big Carbon Fiber Reinforced
we have for our drone. If this
performance drone Composite
Video recorder drone Medium Bi-directional Carbon
materials work, can we improve
Ultra performance Fiber prepreg with Balsa them?
wood core
Georgia Institute of Technology – Mechanical Engineering Department
ME/MSE 4790: Materials Selection and Design.
Professor Richard W. Neu.
Student: Ricardo Diaz Gutierrez GTid:903537812
 Translation table
We will now recapitulate the problem description to create our translation table. We
want to select the best material for a big payload drone propeller. As this will be a
delivery drone, we want to able to carry as much weight as possible at minimum
energy consumption, and for the propellers, this relates directly to the mass of it.
Have the best propeller at minimum mass is our goal. In order to commercialize our
product, we would also try to find the best performance at the least price.
Nevertheless, as we are in a design stage, where testing new materials are the main
objective, this is not a critical feature now. So, economic analysis will be discussed
further in the epilogue of this work.
Depending on the geometry, forces, and environment around the propeller, some
requirements must be met to consider it a good design. Talking about the geometry,
Fig. 1 shows a good schematic of the propeller where the most important parts are
shown. Here the most important parts are the pitch angle (Φ), propeller radius (r) and
width (w), and the cord chamber height (t).
Fig. 2 it’s a good depiction of the different forces experienced by the propeller. Here,
the most important force is centrifugal force, acted in tension, in the blades of the
propellers. Torque bending force and thrust bending forces carry part of the weight
and payload of the drone.
Finally, as the propellers will be direct contact of the sun and maybe rain, we want it
to have good resistance to UV rays, and to fresh water.
In the following translation table, these characteristics will be synthesized and clarify
for the use in our design.

Function Delivery drone propeller

Objective Minimize the mass of the propeller
Constraints Pitch angle for best thrust force, Φ [Fixed by design]
Propeller radius, r [Fixed by design]
Propeller width, w [Fixed by design]
Tension force, Fc [Fixed by design]
Thrust Force, Ft [Fixed by design]
Torque Force, FΦ [Fixed by design]
Must not fail under forces, σf [Fixed by design]
Resistance to UV rays
Resistance to fresh water
Low cost of material and manufacture
Free Variables Material of choice
Chamber height, t
Georgia Institute of Technology – Mechanical Engineering Department
ME/MSE 4790: Materials Selection and Design.
Professor Richard W. Neu.
Student: Ricardo Diaz Gutierrez GTid:903537812

 Schematics
We can refer to Fig. 2 above for a representation of the forces resulting after the
rotary movement of the propellers. The propellers have a convoluted geometry which
helps for better air displacement. However, we can simplify the geometry of a single
propeller blade with a rectangular tie experiencing tension from the base and a
cantilever beam with a distributed bending force. For the schematics in this analysis,
we will separate the forces into two components.
1. A rectangular tie. Here the length will the radius of the propeller. And the
cross-section area will be given by the width of the propeller, and the chamber
height. This centrifugal force acting
along the radius axis is given by the
equation.
Fc = m * (v2 / r) …………………Eq (1)
Where m is the mass of the blade, v is the velocity of the rotation in linear or
angular velocity, and r is the radius or length of the blade. This will give us the
centrifugal force, Fc.
2. For the elastic bending and failure of blades, we will use the representation of
a cantilever beam with a distributed load along the radius axis. Equations of
displacement and failure moments will be used. These are as follow:

Mf=Z*σy … … … … …. …………Eq (2)

δ= FL3/(C1EI)=ML2/(C1EI) …….Eq (3)

Where Z and I are given by the cross-section shape of the blade. For the
simplification, a rectangular section with a fixed b (w) and a free variable h (t)
is given.

Fig. 3: Moments of sections for rectangular shape.

Georgia Institute of Technology – Mechanical Engineering Department
ME/MSE 4790: Materials Selection and Design.
Professor Richard W. Neu.
Student: Ricardo Diaz Gutierrez GTid:903537812
 Performance and material Indices
Using our translation table, we will derive the performance equation and the material
index for the problem at hand. Before starting with the derivation, let’s recall the
formula of the performance equation.
𝑃 = (𝐹) ∗ (𝐺) ∗ (𝑀) Where P is the performance equation, F is the functional
constraints like forces, moments, deflection, safety factor, etc. G refers to the
geometrical constraints, related to shape and form. M is the material properties,
indifferent to the forces and shape, but intrinsic of the materials and its properties.
Using the objective as a place to start, we want to have the best performance at
minimum weight, so here mass is to be minimized.
𝑚 = 𝑉𝜌 = 𝐴𝐿𝜌 and using our values and variables 𝑚 = 𝑤𝑡𝑟𝜌 ……………. …Eq (4)
Here w is the propeller width, t is the chamber height, and r is the radius of the
propeller. The cross-section area A is given by w*t
Now, we will derive these performance equations in the base of the requirements of
the propeller. First, a rectangular element in tension. And then a rectangular cantilever
beam with a distributed load.
I. We want our propeller blades to rotate and withstand the centrifugal force Fc
𝐹
without failing. As we know, stress is given by a force per surface area 𝜎𝑓 ≥ 𝐴𝑐
We are using stress or strength at failure because this is what we are counting
𝐹
for. Using area, or our free variable t, we have 𝐴 ≥ 𝜎𝑐 So, solving for Eq. 4
𝑓
𝐹𝑐
𝑚 = 𝜎 𝑟𝜌. Finally, rearranging in the form of the performance equation.
𝑓
𝜌
𝑚 = (𝐹𝑐 )(𝑟) (𝜎 ) …..Eq (5)
𝑓
𝜎𝑓
𝑀1 = ( 𝜌 ) …………..Eq (6) This is the material index, and it should be
maximized.

II. Forces in bending are important. The blade of the propeller is experiencing
bending as it were a cantilever beam with a distributed load. The bending
𝐹𝑡,𝛷
stiffness of a beam is given by, 𝑆 = using Thrust and Torque forces. The
𝛿
𝐹𝐿3
deflection of a beam is given by 𝛿 = 𝐶 Now, if we move the deflection back
1 𝐸𝐼
𝑆𝐿3
into the equation, we can substitute this for the stiffness. 1 = 𝐶 …. Eq. (7)
1 𝐸𝐼
Here, C1 is the type of load in the beam. The air will push the blade in all its
dimension, so this can be considered as a distributed load. From appendix B3
of the book Material Selection in mechanical design, Ashby 2018 when can
see that the value for a distributed load is C1=8. Fig. 3 shows the different
moments of area for the rectangular section. We are only interested in the
Georgia Institute of Technology – Mechanical Engineering Department
ME/MSE 4790: Materials Selection and Design.
Professor Richard W. Neu.
Student: Ricardo Diaz Gutierrez GTid:903537812
𝑤𝑡 3
second moment of area I. Solving for our variables 𝐼 = 12 . Using the free
variable t and substituting in the stiffness equation (Eq. 7).
12𝑆𝐿3 12𝑆𝐿3
1=𝐶 And solving for the free variable 𝑡 3 = Now, we will use the
1 𝐸𝑤𝑡 3 𝐶1 𝐸𝑤
objective equation, Eq. (4), to find the value in terms of the free variable.
1/3
12𝑆𝑟 3
𝑚 = 𝑤𝑡𝑟𝜌 = 𝑤 ( 𝐶 ) ∗𝑟∗𝜌 This is now our performance equation.
1 𝐸𝑤
Finally, rearranging in the form of the material index.
12𝑆 1/3 𝜌
𝑚 =(𝐶 ) ∗ (𝑤 2/3 𝑟 2 ) ∗ (𝐸1/3)
1

𝐸 1/3
𝑀2 = ( ) …………..Eq (8) this is to be maximized.
𝜌

III. For analysis of the failure of the beam as a cantilever, we won’t perform the
𝜎
derivation of the material index as this will yield an index in terms of ( 𝜌𝑓 ). As
we know for the analysis of the forces, the most important forces acting on
the propeller blade is the centrifugal forces. In conclusion, Material Index one,
M1, is the most important consideration for the performance of our propeller,
𝜎𝑓 1/2
which means that 𝑀3 = ( ) will be overcome by Material Index one.
𝜌