REVERSE ENGINEERING IN MODELING OF AIRCRAFT PROPELLER BLADE - FIRST STEP TO PRODUCT OPTIMIZATION

Propeller aircrafts have had many ups and downs throughout their use in the aviation history. Due to the current economic recession and price hikes in fuels, propeller aircrafts may yet again be a choice for aerial transport and has thus re-emerged as an active area for research. On modern propeller aircrafts old aluminum propellers are being replaced with fiber reinforced composite propellers. However, owing to their reliability, strength, and integrity, aluminum propellers are still used in military aircrafts. One of the challenges that engineers of these aircraft-type have had to deal with is the non-availability of engineering drawings of these propellers. It is practically impossible to carry out any study, research or modification on such propellers in the absence of correct CAD data. This article proposes a methodology wherein a CAD model of a C- 130 aircraft propeller blade can be constructed using reverse engineering techniques. Such a model would help in future aerodynamic as well as structural analyses which includes investigation on structural integrity and the fluid dynamics characteristics of propeller blades. Different steps involved in this process are discussed; starting from laser scanning to obtain the cloud of points data and subsequently generating a CAD model in a commercial CAD software. The model is then imported into an analysis software where quality surface meshes are generated using tetrahedral elements. The purpose is to prepare a meshed model for future computational analysis including CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) and FE (Finite Element) analysis.