Propeller, Repeller, Wings - construction kit
Description
#Propeller Realistic propeller, repeller (e.g. used for wind turbines) and wing designs lead to highly organic shapes. They are usually constructed by skinning a sequence of airfoil-shaped ribs, with each rib being designed with an individual airfoil profile and having its dedicated position in 3D space. Using OpenSCAD to model such an object can be quite challenging and requires the use of several advanced programming techniques and in particular an efficient description which I present and explain in this post. The example code given shows the construction of two typical propellers, a Graupner 33/20 cm E-prop (i.e. diameter 33cm and advance 20cm per revolution) and a blade pair for Mavic pro mini 11/6.6 cm. Just for fun I extended the design scheme (i.e. the description format and interpreter) to be able to do a *loop propeller* according to the invention of Rudolf Bannasch. This kind of propeller is supposed to have a high efficiency and to run extremly silent. I don't know, whether I got the twist in the right way. Please comment in case you have a better unterstanding of this interesting propeller type. The basic ingredients for composing your own blades and wings are: 1. a description format - this will be a matrix M given as list of vectors. Each vector is a parameter set that is used partly for the construction of a single rib and partly for its positioning in 3D space. 2. a *gendat()* function that interprets the lines of a given description matrix and returns a sequence of polygons. Each polygon describes a rib with individual airfoil data being mapped (rotated and translated) into 3D space according to the parameter vector. 3. a fully parametric *airfoil_data()* function - this function generates the airfoil data forming a single rib 4. sweep() or skin() for extrusion along a sequence of frames (i.e. along the rib polygons placed in 3D space) 5. a interpolation scheme *nSpline()* that operates over the description format and returns a matrix with an arbitrary refinement. This means it calculates additional lines describing intermediate ribs with smooth, organic transitions. The description format which is interpreted by *gendat()* can be chosen freely. In order to support interpolation, floating point value should be used. I chose a vector format containing 10 elements and used the first 4 parameters for calling the *airfoil_data()* function, the next 3 parameters for affine translation along X, Y, Z axis and the last 3 parmeters for affine rotation around X, Y, Z axis. ``` M = [// naca_params, chord, TX, TY, TZ RX, Ry, RZ [ .0, .4, .15, 4, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, -0], // ascending pitch [ .1, .4, .15, 5, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0, -10], [ .1, .4, .1, 10, 0, 0, 12, 0, 0, -pa(12)], // from here proper pitch ... [ .1, .4, .1, 11, 0, 0, 18, 0, 0, -pa(18)], [ .1, .4, .061, 5, 0, 0, 53, 0, 0, -pa(53)], [ .1, .4, .06, 2, 0, .1, 55, 0, 0, -pa(55)], ]; ``` Thus the second line ``` [ .1, .4, .15, 5, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0, -10], ``` will be interpreted as follows: 1. construct an airfoil as polygon with 10% (.1) camber at 40% (.4) and a thickness of 15% (.15) and a chord length of 5. To do this I used the function *airfoil_data()* from my Naca 4-digit library presented in my post [NACA Airfoils - 4 digit fully parametric OpenSCAD library](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:898554). The number of points in the polygon is defaulted by 81. You can alter this value by specifying the N parameter in the call, but be aware that *sweep()* expects it to be the same for each rib. 2. translate the polygon with [0, 0, 4] - i.e. 4 along Z 3. rotate the polygon with [0, 0, -10] - i.e. -10° around Z while the third line ``` [ .1, .4, .1, 10, 0, 0, 12, 0, 0, -pa(12)], // from here proper pitch ... ``` will be interpreted as: 1. construct an airfoil as polygon with 10% (.1) camber at 40% (.4) and thickness of 10% (.1) and a chord length of 10. (The number of points in the polygon is defaulted by 81) 2. translate the polygon with [0, 0, 12] - i.e. 12 along Z 3. rotate the polygon with [0, 0, -pa(12)]. The *pa()* function returns the appropriate pitch angle for a given Z-radius (here 12) according to the given (global) pitch value (for a metric 11/6.6 propeller this value is 66 mm). It evaluates to 41.1974°. This means, you need this blade angle to ensure a displacement of 66mm per revolution at the given radial position of 12mm. The *gendat()* function interprets the description format and returns a list of polygons that can be fed into *sweep()*. ``` function gendata(M) = // main function to generate airfoil slices [ for(i=[0:len(M)-1]) let(N=M[i]) let(af = Tx(-N[3]/2, vec3(airfoil_data(part(N, 0, 2), L=N[3])))) // generate polygon for slice T(part(N, 4, 6), R(part(N, 7,9), af))] // place (=rotate + translate) slice in 3D ; ``` The functions *T(x,y,z, polygon)*, *R(x,y,z, polygon)* and *Tx(x, polygon)* are affine transformations: translation, rotation and translation along X, respectively. They are defined in the *Naca_sweep* library further explained in my post [NACA airfoil sweep - OpenSCAD library](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:900137). This library also contains the implementation of the *sweep()* function that skins the polygon sequence into a 3D object. Note, that this function presumes that each polygon has the same number of points, and that polygons do not self-intersect, nor mutually intersect. (It does not check this and will have a malformed output, in case intersections occur. Check the output with *thrown together view*, F12. Any non-expected coloring indicates problems.) The call for this mighty function is quite simple: ``` sweep(gendata(M_), showslices = sl); // extrude blade along interpolated path ``` the *showslices* parameter can be set *true* to visualize the frames (see images showing the ribs for the interpolated and the uninterpolated description). Note that the TZ column mainly defines the displacement in the sequence. The hard work required to form an organic shape is done by some kind of magic multi-dimensional interpolation scheme on the basis of splines. It is called *nSpline()* and its implementation is contained in the *splines.scad* library. Please refer to my post [boat propeller customizable - OpenSCAD nSpline() library with show cases](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1208001) if you are interested in a somehow more explicit explanation and additional showcases of its usage. It operates over the description format and expands it to any desired refinement. The call is very simple. You provide the matrix and the desired refinement: ``` N = 50; // # of slices to be interpolated M_ = nSpline(M, N); // interpolation ``` Note that interpolations can overshoot, if some parameters in a column are not properly selected (too close, too edgy).
Statistics
Likes
64
Downloads
0