AN AIRCRAFT PROPELLER BLADE MODELED AND ANALYZED USING CATIA V5 WITH ANSYS CFX FOR COMPUTATIONAL FLOW

Abstract

Aircraft propellers are among the most demanding rotating aero-structural components because to the simultaneous application of centrifugal loads, aerodynamic bending and torsional stresses, and vibratory stimulation. Compared to their fiber-reinforced composite counterparts, traditional aluminum blades are both heavier and more prone to fatigue, despite their ease of production. An airplane propeller with several blades, designed for fabrication in a fiber-reinforced polymer composite, is detailed in this work along with its computational flow analysis and threedimensional solid modeling. A twisted aerofoil blade profile, a central hub, and the whole eight-blade rotor assembly were created by modeling the geometry in CATIA V5 utilizing the Part Design, Wireframe and Surface Design, and Assembly Design workbenches. Importing the CATIA assembly into ANSYS Workbench allowed us to examine the flow field around the spinning propeller on an unstructured tetrahedral mesh with 7,960 nodes and 41,116 elements using the Fluid Flow (CFX) system. Within 47 iterations of the outer loop, a steady-state laminar-flow solution with a uniform input velocity of 64 m/s converged to an RMS residual goal of 1×10⁻⁴, with normalized imbalances for the mass and momentum equations within ±0.04%. The rotor's thrust-generation mechanism was confirmed by post-processing, which showed pressure differentials throughout the blade surfaces ranging from around -3.27 MPa to +6.95 MPa and local flow velocities approaching 115 m/s at the tips of the blades. Along with the geometric design, the report includes the pressure, viscous forces, and moments that were retrieved from the solver and applied to the blade and hub surfaces. This provides a verified baseline flow field that may be used for future mapping onto a structural/composite laminate model of the blade. In order to advance a design to the detailed engineering stage, it must undergo specific refinements, such as turbulence modeling, rotating-reference-frame analysis, and one-way fluidstructure interaction (FSI) onto a composite lay-up. This study proves that an integrated CATIA-to-ANSYS workflow is appropriate for the preliminary aero-structural design evaluation of composite aircraft propeller blades.