Computational Fluid Modelling of Toroidal Propeller Wake

An aircraft propeller produces thrust by rotating its blades, which act like small wings with an airfoil shape. As the blades spin, they create a pressure difference—lower pressure in front and higher pressure behind. These pushes air backward (propwash) creating a thrust force, propelling aircraft forward.

Unfortunately, during the thrust production the propeller is creating an aerodynamic losses in form of the blade tip vortices. By changing the shape of the propeller to toroidal, the pressure distribution at the blade will be altered, which in turn will improve the aerodynamic efficiency. Additionally, the toroidal shape is expected to minimize noise through changes in the propwash. As a result, a key part of the Torpropel project involves characterizing the wake behind the aircraft. To achieve this, the propwash is measured using a bespoke prepared measurement station, which records air direction, speed, fluctuations, and propeller noise.

The graph below present propwash air velocity map 8m behind the airplane.