Results in Physics 7 (2017) 2973–2975

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Results in Physics
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A new method for aerodynamic test of high altitude propellers

Xiying Gong ⇑, Lin Zhang
Xi’an ASN Technology Group Co., Ltd, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A ground test system is designed for aerodynamic performance tests of high altitude propellers. The sys-
Received 28 December 2016 tem is consisted of stable power supply, servo motors, two-component balance constructed by tension-
Received in revised form 9 May 2017 compression sensors, ultrasonic anemometer, data acquisition module. It is loaded on a truck to simulate
Accepted 2 July 2017
propellers’ wind-tunnel test for different wind velocities at low density circumstance. The graphical pro-
Available online 4 July 2017
gramming language LABVIEW for developing virtual instrument is used to realize the test system control
and data acquisition. Aerodynamic performance test of a propeller with 6.8 m diameter was completed
Keywords:
by using this system. The results verify the feasibility of the ground test method.
High altitude propeller
Ground test
Ó 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND
Virtual instrument control system license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Introduction
In recent years, the role of high altitude airship in military and
civilian areas is becoming increasingly important [1]. The rise and
fall of airship are controlled relying on air buoyancy, while the for-
ward flight depends on the thrust generated by the rotation of the
propeller. Considering the advantages of propeller, such as light
weight, huge thrust and the effectiveness of driving low speed air-
craft, domestic and foreign airship commonly uses propeller as the
propulsion device currently [2]. Because the high altitude and
long-endurance flight of Near Spacecraft is achieved by the pro-
peller successfully.
Compared with the conventional propeller, the near space pro-
peller can supply higher lift in the case of high subsonic and low
Reynolds number. The flow around the near space propeller is
compressible flow and has significant unsteady aerodynamic char-
acteristics. Accurate theoretical analysis is vacant for aerodynamic
performance tests of high altitude airship propellers. The similar-
ity criterion is used to scale down the propeller in ground conven-
tional wind tunnel test. The scale of propeller 10.0 m is reduced in
proportion to 0.75 m at an altitude of 20 km. The propeller belongs
to slender structure. Considering structure processing errors of
scaled down propeller and structure deformation connection
between the scaled down propeller and the original propeller
caused by aerodynamic loads, the conventional wind tunnel is
restricted seriously [3].
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: wdfgxy@163.com (X. Gong).
Currently, there are two kinds of methods designed for aerody-
namic performance tests of the near space propellers. The first
method is the wind tunnel test for variable density, for example,
the transonic wind tunnel in American NASA Langley Research
Center can reduce the atmospheric density to one-fortieth of the
ground atmospheric density, whose test scale is 4.9 m
4.9 m
[3,4]. The second method is high altitude delivery, for example,
APEX Flight Program initiated by NASA Glenn Research Center,
which plans to use high altitude hot air balloon carrying glider
which is equipped with monitoring and control equipment, data
acquisition module, power supply and control system. Then the
glider is delivered at the altitude of 33 km, which drops according
to predefined procedure under the control of the navigation sys-
tem. At last the performance data is acquired while the rotational
speed of the propeller is controlled [5]. All these methods for aero-
dynamic performance tests of the near space propellers are effec-
tive, but there are some drawbacks remained to be solved, such
as expensive costs, long test period, and technical difficulties. The
development of the near space propellers test research is limited
by all these drawbacks.
According to the scale connection between the scaled down pro-
peller and the original propeller, this paper presents a new high alti-
tude propeller aerodynamic test method, which is high altitude
ground vehicle test method. A design for vehicle test platform on
which the aerodynamic performance for large-scale propeller can
be tested on existing road is proposed in this paper. The tension
and torque tests for a certain propeller of 6.8 m diameter at different
conditions

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rinp.2017.07.005
2211-3797/Ó 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
2974 X. Gong, L. Zhang / Results in Physics 7 (2017) 2973–2975
Vehicle test platform for large-scale propeller
System components
Vehicle test platform consists of power system, motor system,
measurement system, control system, load vehicle, bench and etc.
(1) Power system
The power system is supplied by diesel generator combined
with stabilized direct current (DC) power supply. For the diesel
generator, the start-up method is 24 V direct current start-up,
the rated power is 75KW, the spare power is 82.5KW, the rated
voltage is 400/230 V, the rated current is 135 A, the rated fre-
quency is 50 Hz, and the weight is 1280 kg. For the stabilized
power supply, the range of output voltage is 0–600 V, and the
range of output current is 0–225 A.
(2) Motor system
The servo drivers are used as the motor controller, of which the
adapted motor capacity is 30 kW, the rated voltages are
380/400/415/440 V, the rated frequencies are 50/60 Hz, the
accepted voltage fluctuation is +10%/15%, the accepted frequency
fluctuation is ±5%, the maximum output rotation rate is 3000 rpm,
and the accuracy of speed control is ±0.1%.
(3) Measurement system
The measurement system consists of the anemometer for air
speed and wind direction, the Sensor balance for tension and
torque of the propeller, and data acquisition and processing
system.
Fig. 1. Two-component balance of tension-compression sensors.
1 Electric Motor 2 Barometer
5 Balance 6 Regulated Power
Fig. 2. Distribution of ground vehicle test system.
a. Anemometer
The anemometer is ultrasonic anemometer which can be con-
nected to computer via RS-485 communication mode. For the mea-
surement of air speed, the range of measurement is 0–60 m/s, the
resolution is 0.01 m/s, the accuracy is ±0.2 m/s@  10 m/s, ±2%
@ > 10 m/s. for the measurement of wind direction, the range of
measurement is 0–360°, the accuracy is ±1°, and the resolution is
0.1°.
b. Sensor balance
The two-component balance consists of 4 tension sensors, as
shown in Fig. 1. The principle of function is as below. When the
tension of propeller is acted on balance, because of the torque pro-
duced, the sensor 2 and 4 are under pressure and the sensor 1 and
3 are in tension. When the torque of propeller is acted on balance,
because of the torque produced, the sensor 2 and 3 are under pres-
sure and the sensor 1 and 4 are in tension. At the same time, the
pressure or tension on sensor 1 and 3 are equal.
where U11, U21, U31, U41 are the values of relative change of
the tension on the sensors under load. U12, U22, U32, U42 are
the values of relative change of the torque on the sensors under
load. R11, R21, R31, R41 are calibration coefficient of tension of
each sensor. R12, R22, R32, R42 are calibration coefficient of torque
of each sensor. Thus:
Tension:
F ¼ ðR11 U11 þ R31 U31  R41 U41  R21 U21 Þ=4  LF
Torque:
M ¼ ðR12 U12 þ R42 U42  R22 U22  R32 U32 Þ=4  LM
where LF, LM are moment arm correction factor of the tension and
torque of the propeller. It is obvious that LM = 1 and LF need to be
calibrated according to the actual situation.
Through rigorous balance calibration experiment, we got the
relation curve and function equation between the tensile testing
coefficient and torque testing coefficient. Data acquisition (DAQ)
system is composed of a NI cDAQ port (NI 9174) and two 24-bit
whole/half bridge analog input module with 4 Channel (NI 9237).
The components of ground vehicle test system are diesel gener-
ating set, host computer, motor, Ultrasonic anemometer and data
acquisition system. Diesel generating set power the frequency con-
verter through regulated power supply. Host computer controls
3 Ultrasonic Anemometer 4 Control Computer
7 Generator 8 DAQ Card
 X. Gong, L. Zhang / Results in Physics 7 (2017) 2973–2975
a VIEW and its Serial Port configure, read, write and close functions
b influence of filtering smoothing to test data. The parameters that
Fig. 3. Propeller thrust in different altitude with wind speed of 5 m/s, a: 0.5 km; b:
3.6 km.
the motion and power of servo motor. Then, motor drives the
propeller through stop plate and flange plate. Ultrasonic
anemometer and data acquisition system are powered by portable
power source and controlled by the same host computer. Fig. 2
shows the distribution of ground vehicle test system.
Measure and control software
Balance, Ultrasonic anemometer and servo motor are controlled
by NI DAQ card and LABVIEW. At the same time, the data and
waveform processing module of LABVIEW are used to filter the
sampling data, in order to eliminate the high frequency interfer-
ence of data. Aerodynamic forces are calculated by mathematics
module. The Microsoft Excels generated by the data storage mod-
ule of LABVIEW contain detailed experimental data, including time,
voltage, force, torque, motor speed, wind speed and direction, etc.
The difficulty in software design is hardware integration of
servo motor, anemometer and balance data acquisition system.
2975
For servo motor and anemometer, we use VISA module of LAB-
to build software for specific communication protocol and order
format. RS485 to USB Interface is used to transport control signal
and data. For balance data acquisition system, we chose NI DAQ
card to collect required signal data with related DAQmx functions.
The test software interface provides four parts in paging dis-
play: experimental interface, data recording, signal comparison
and parameter setting. The parameters that are finally needed such
as aerodynamic forces, aerodynamic movements, wind speed,
wind direction, motor speed, voltage signals, etc. is showed on
the page of ‘experimental interface’. And the main operating but-
tons such as initialization, filter frequency, sampling parameter,
motor speed, data recording, data saving, etc. is also designed on
the page of ‘experimental interface’. The ‘data recording’ page is
designed to display the final data that was recorded and to imple-
ment real-time monitoring. The ‘signal comparison’ page is
designed to display the differences in voltage signals with and
without filtering and smoothing operations, and to analyze the
can’t be easily changed during testing process can be changed on
the page of ‘parameter setting’. These parameters are including:
the motor address, the port of inverter, the port of anemometer,
the direction of motor, etc.
Discussion of the results of Vehicle-mounted propeller test
In order to verify the feasibility of Vehicle-mounted Measure-
ment and Control System, experiments were carried out in Xi’an
(Altitude 0.5 km) and Qinghai (Altitude 3.6 km). And the diameter
of the propeller in these experiments is 6.8 m. Fig. 3 shows the
comparison between test results and CFD results. It can be found
that the results from CFD calculation and experimental test agree
well. The mean relative error is less than 6%.
Conclusions
This paper provides a new test method for propeller test in high
altitude. Measuring propulsive efficiency of propeller by using
Vehicle-mounted test platform is feasible and referable. It can pro-
vide experiment basis for airship propulsion system and high alti-
tude propeller designing. The experimental model that doesn’t
have wind tunnel test platform or is not suitable for wind tunnel
test, such as the fluid field characteristic and output efficiency of
wind turbines can also be tested with the Vehicle-mounted test
platform described in this article.
References
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[2] Erie RM. Technical feasibility of loitering lighter than-air near-space
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[3] Colozza A. High altitude propeller design and analysis overview. NASA-CR-
1998-208520, 1998.
[4] Britcher CP. Possibilities for aerodynamic and heat transfer testing of ERAST
components in the NASA langley transonic dynamics tunnel. Department of
Aerospace Engineering, Old Dominion University.
[5] Cole SR, Rivera JA. The new heavy gas testing capability in the NASA langley
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