Experimental Feasibility Assessment of Counter-Rotating Propellers for Stratospheric Airships

摘要

A series of systematic wind tunnel tests of a given stratospheric airship counter-rotating propeller have been conducted in this paper. The basic aerodynamic performance of the stratospheric airship counter-rotating propeller has been explored. In addition, different from conventional propellers, the effect of low Reynolds number has been illustrated. Compared with single-rotating propellers, the interference between front and rear propeller has also been discussed. The experimental results indicate that low Reynolds number would strongly reduce the efficiency of counter-rotating propellers. Due to the interference between a pair of propellers, the performance of front propeller gets slightly worse, whereas the performance of rear propeller turns much better. A significant improvement of efficiency of overall CRP would be gained. By comparison with other configuration of propeller propulsion system, it indicates the counter-rotating propeller would be a wise option applied on stratospheric airships.