Aeroelastic Analysis for the High Altitude Propeller by Using Fluid-Structure Interaction Method

Abstract

This paper presents an aeroelastic analysis for the high altitude propeller designed for the stratospheric airship KFG-series. Aerodynamic analysis is carried out in Fluent by using sliding mesh method and a loosely coupled method is employed to solve the aeroelastic response. The real composite propeller structure is modeled in Ansys Acp module and Mechanical APDL enable the data exchange between CFD and CSD solver. Spring-based smoothing method is adopted for updating the mesh deformation. Firstly a comparison between experimental and numerical results is employed for validating the accuracy of the numerical model. Then in fluid-structure analysis, aeroelastic response of the blade tip leading edge shows a limit cycle oscillation and the blade averaged deformation shows a very small deflection due to the dynamic stiffness effect. In the final, equivalent stress of the blade material and a comparative study of the aerodynamic performance for rigid and deformed propeller at the design condition are presented and it is found that there is a lower thrust performance for the deformed propeller due to the small pitch variation.