Sunday, November 29, 2009

The plots thicken

Here are some 2D and 3D plots of our first production propeller design.

Though we have allowed room on the cart for a 20ft prop, this one is a 16ft. The windsurfing masts that we are using for spars allow for a very clean and simple 16 footer without needing any extensions at the root so we're going the easy route first round.

It's likely that we'll build more than just this first one. We'll put this one on the test stand and dyno, document it's actual performance curves, compare them to the theoretical and decide whether it deserves an actual test on the cart.

If we're careful enough during construction we might just pull it off with one, but as we've never built a prop of this size before, we're learning as we go. Both construction wise and performance wise we'll use what we learn on this one to improve round 2 if needed.