CFD study of an advanced high-speed NASA propeller

Turbo-prop engines have high propulsive efficiency for moderate subsonic cruise speed. However, their performance rapidly deteriorates as transonic conditions are approached. NASA, through the "Advanced Turboprop Project" (ATP), developed advanced propellers capable of operating at high cruise Mach number, known as prop-fan. This thesis focuses on a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) study of SR-3 NASA high speed propeller to investigate the reliability of the numerical model in reproducing experimental performance data at a cruise Mach number of 0.80. The reconstructed blade geometry is simulated using Ansys CFX on a range of advance ratios from 2.9 to 4.1. The results obtained are compared with experimental data provided by NASA; the maximum efficiency obtained from the simulation is 70.9%, compared to the experimentally one 78.2%. In general, efficiency is lower compared to the NASA test cases due to the overestimation of the power coefficient. At an advance ratio of 3.06, the power coefficient is 2.40, whereas the wind tunnel datum is 1.86. As the advance ratio increases, this discrepancy decreases, and the data tends to be more similar to the experimental ones.