Applicability of Euler Analysis to Prop-Fan Aerodynamic Design

Applicability of a numerical code to aerodynamic design of a Prop-Fan is established by precise agreement of numerical results with experimental data, i.e., not only measured integrated performance indices, such as power coefficient or net efficiency but also pressure distribution on the blade surface should agree well with computed results. For this purpose, an Euler Code using the Total Variation Diminishing scheme has been developed. Numerical calculations are performed with this scheme for the SR-7L Prop-Fan at the freestream Mach number 0.5 and 0.78. The computed power coefficient, C_P = 1.46 at M_∞ = 0.5 shows good agreement with experimental data. At this computed C_P, the computed pressure distributions on the blade surfaces show good agreement with the experimental results. For the 0.78M_∞ case the computed C_P of 0.87 also shows good agreement with the experimental results and the computed pressure distributions are in general agreement with the experimental data. These results indicate that the present Euler-Code could provide guidance for aerodynamic design of a Prop-Fan of the SR-7L type.