Aircraft Propellers

AMT 122
Propellers

• A mechanical device for propelling a

boat or aircraft, consisting of a revolving
shaft with two or more broad, angled
blades attached to it.
Early Propellers

• Early propeller designs

include fabric covered
wooden paddles to an
elaborate multiblade wire-
braced designs
• As aeronautical science
developed, propeller designs
evolved from flat boards
that push air backward to
airfoils that produced lift to
pull aircrafts forward.
 The blades of a single-piece propeller extend from the hub assembly. Blades have a shank and a
tip, while the hub assembly has a hub bore and bolt holes that facilitate propeller mounting

Propeller
Nomenclature • Familiarity with some basic terms and components names is
critical to understand the principles of how a propeller
produces thrust.
• All modern propellers consist of at least two blades connected
to a central hub.
• The portion of a propeller blade that is nearest to the hub is
referred to as the blade shank, and the portion furthest from
the hub is called the blade tip.
• The propeller hub, or hub assembly, is bored out to create a
hub bore which permits a propeller to be mounted on the
engine crankshaft or to a reduction gear assembly.
Propeller Nomenclature

• Each blade on a propeller acts as a rotating

wing to produce lift and pull an aircraft
through the air.
• Therefore propeller blades share much of
the same nomenclature as aircraft wings.
• For example, all propeller blades have a
leading edge, a trailing edge, and a chord
line.
 • A chord line is an imaginary
line drawn through an airfoil
from the leading edge to the
trailing edge.
• The curved, or cambered
side of a propeller blade is
called the blade back and
the flat side is called the
blade face.
• A propeller's blade angle is
the acute angle formed by a
propeller’s plane of rotation
and the blade's chord line.
• A propeller's plane of
rotation is always
Propeller Nomenclature perpendicular to the engine
crankshaft.
Propeller Nomenclature

• Propellers which allow changes in blade angle

have removable blades that are secured to a hub
assembly by a set of clamping rings.
• The blade shank on this type of blade is typically
round and extends out to at least the end of the
hub assembly; however, in some cases, the shank
may extend beyond the hub assembly and into the
airstream.
• When this is the case, blade cuffs may be installed
to improve air flow around the blade shank.
Propeller Nomenclature
(Blade Cuff)
• A blade cuff is an airfoil-shaped
attachment made of thin sheets of
metal, plastic, or composite material.
• Blade cuffs mount on the blade shanks
and are primarily used to increase the
flow of cooling air to the engine
nacelle.
 Propeller
Nomenclature (Blade
Stations)

• To aid in identifying specific

points along the length of a
propeller blade, most blades
have several defined blade
stations.
• A blade station is simply a
reference position on a
propeller blade that is a
specified distance from the
center of the hub
PROPELLER THEORY
• When the propeller rotates through
the air, a low-pressure area is
created in front of the blade, much
like the wing's curvature creates a
low-pressure area above the wing.
• This low-pressure area, combined
with the constant, or high-pressure
area behind the blade allow a
propeller to produce thrust.
• The amount of thrust produced
depends on several factors
including, the angle of attack of the
propeller blades, the speed the
blades move through the air, and
the shape of the airfoil.
 • The angle of attack (AOA) of a
propeller blade is the angle
formed by the chord line of the
blade and the relative wind.
Stationary Aircraft • The direction of the relative
wind is determined by the
speed that aircraft moves
through the air and the
rotational motion of the
propeller.
• When the propeller rotates on
a stationary aircraft, the
direction of the relative wind is
exactly opposite to the
rotational movement of the
Angle of Attack and propeller. In this case, the angle
of attack is the same as the
Relative wind propeller blade angle.
 • When the aircraft
begins moving forward,
Moving Aircraft the relative wind shift
because, in addition to
rotation, the propeller
now has forward
motion.
• The result is that the
relative wind is much
closer to the angle of
attack. In this case the
Angle of Attack and angle of attack will
always be less than the
Relative wind blade angle.
Effects of Airspeed and RPM
on AOA
• The faster the aircraft moves through the air (Airspeed) ,
the smaller the angle of attack on the propeller blade.
• If the propeller speed increases (RPM) , the relative wind
strikes the propeller blade at a greater angle and the angle
of attack increases.

• The most effective angle of attack for a propeller is in

between 2 and 4 degrees.
• Any angle exceeding 15 degrees is ineffective since the
propeller might stall.
Propeller sections
and speed
• Unlike a wing, which moves
through the air at a uniform
rate, the propeller section
near the tip rotates at a
greater velocity than those
near the hub.
• To compensate for the
difference in velocity along a
propeller blade, the blade
angle changes along its
length.
• The gradual decrease in blade
angle from the hub to the tip
is called pitch distribution,
or twist.
PITCH DISTRIBUTION
(TWIST)

• Blade twist enables a propeller to

provide a fairly constant angle of
attack along most of the length of the
blade.
• In addition, most propellers have a
thicker, low speed airfoil near the
blade hub and a thinner, high speed
airfoil near the tip.
• This relative thickness of the
propeller, along with blade twist,
enables the propeller to produce a
relatively constant amount of thrust
along the entire length of the
propeller.
FORCES ACTING ON A PROPELLER

• A rotating propeller is subjected to many

forces that cause tension, twisting, and
bending stresses.
• Centrifugal force causes the greatest force
• Centrifugal force can be described as the
force tending to pull the blades out of the
hub.
• The amount of stress created by centrifugal
force can be more than 7500 times the
weight of the propeller blade.
 THRUST BENDING
FORCE

• Thrust bending force tends

to bend the propeller blades
forward at the tips.
• Since the propeller blades
are typically thinner near
the tip, thrust produced at
the tip tends to flex the
blade forward.
• Thrust bending force
opposes centrifugal force to
some degree
 TORQUE BENDING
FORCE

• Occur as air resistance

opposes the rotational
motion of the propeller
blades.
• This force tends to bend the
blades opposite the
direction of rotation.
 AERODYNAMIC
TWISTING FORCE

• Tends to increase a
propeller’s blade angle.
• When a propeller blade
produces thrust, the
majority of the thrust is
exerted ahead of the blade’s
axis of rotation.
• In some cases, aerodynamic
twisting force is used to
help change the blade angle
on a propeller.