Experimental and Numerical Study of a UAV Propeller Printed in Clear Resin

This paper presents an experimental and numerical investigation of a 254 mm resin-printed propeller operating at rotational speeds between 3000 and 9000 RPM. Propeller thrust and torque were measured using a six-degree-of-freedom load cell, while acoustic data were captured with a microphone positioned three times the propeller diameter from the center. To complement the experimental analysis, computational simulations were conducted using ANSYS Fluent with the detached eddy simulation (DES) model, the Ffowcs-Williams and Hawkings (FW-H) model, and a transient flow solver. The figure of merit (FM) results show that the resin propeller slightly outperforms two commercial counterparts with a marginal difference between the wood and resin propellers. Additionally, the resin propeller demonstrates better noise performance, exhibiting the lowest primary tonal noise, broadband noise, and overall sound pressure level (OASPL), with minimal differences between the two commercial counterparts. ANSYS Fluent simulations predict thrust and torque within a 10% error margin, showing particularly accurate results for primary tonal noise. A new trade-off index is proposed to assess the balance between propeller performance and aeroacoustics, revealing distinct trends compared to traditional metrics. Furthermore, aerodynamic phenomena such as flow separation on the leading edge near the tip, flow separation behind the middle trailing edge, and vortex interactions at the root are identified as key contributors to tonal and broadband noise. These findings provide valuable insights into propeller design and aeroacoustic optimization.