Design and performance of energy efficient propellers for Mach 0.8 cruise

The increased emphasis on fuel conservation in the world has stimulated a series of studies of both conventional and unconventional propulsion systems for commercial aircraft. Preliminary results from these studies indicate that a fuel saving of 14 to 40 percent may be realized by the use of an advanced high-speed turboprop. This turboprop must be capable of high efficiency at Mach 0.8 cruise above 9.144 km altitude if it is to compete with turbofan powered commercial aircraft. Several advanced aerodynamic concepts were investigated in recent wind tunnel tests under NASA sponsorship on two propeller models. These concepts included aerodynamically integrated propeller/nacelles, area ruling, blade sweep, reduced blade thickness and power (disk) loadings several times higher than conventional designs. The aerodynamic design methodology for these models is discussed. In addition, some of the preliminary test results are presented which indicate that propeller net efficiencies near 80 percent were obtained for high disk loading propellers operating at Mach 0.8

Microstructure–stiffness relationships of ten European and tropical hardwood species

Hardwood species exhibit a huge anatomical variability. This makes them perfect study objects for exploring relations between structural features at different length scales and corresponding stiffness properties of wood. We carry out microscopic analysis, nanoindentation tests, as well as macroscale ultrasonic and quasi-static tension tests and build a complete set of microstructural and corresponding micromechanical data of ten different (European and tropical) hardwood species. In addition, we apply micromechanical modeling to further elucidate the individual influences of particular structural features, which might appear only in a superimposed manner in experiments. The test results confirm the dominant influences of the microfibril angle on the stiffness at cell wall level and of density at the macroscopic scale. Vessels and ray cells affect the macroscopic stiffness of the wood tissue not only through their content, but also through their arrangement and shape: A ring-porous structure results in comparably higher longitudinal but lower radial stiffness than a diffuse-porous one. As for ray cells, large and particularly compactly shaped bundles might reduce the stiffness in tangential direction because of the fiber deviations they cause. Moreover, vessel and ray content might affect the relation between nanoindentation modulus and density-corrected macroscopic longitudinal stiffness