aviation
Propeller with eleven blades promises properties of a jet plane
The number of blades gives the propellers a somewhat bizarre appearance.
©PR
More blades mean more thrust and less noise. Continuously developed the MT propellers, rotors with more blades. They should help to build airplanes with electric motors.
More blades, more thrust, that’s what the German manufacturer MT-Propeller says. The company has developed an eleven-blade propeller and tested it on an airplane. With the help of the propeller, an aircraft converts the rotary motion of the engine into thrust. The speed of rotation and the area of the blades largely determine the strength of the propulsion thrust. The number of blades, however, the amount of impulses per rotation.
The eleven-blade propeller was tried on a Piper PA31T1 powered by Pratt & Whitney PT6A-135A turbines. According to MT, the behavior of the turboprop is similar to that of a jet aircraft. More thrust is available faster and the noise is more even and less annoying.
According to the company, the static thrust for take-off was 15 percent higher than with a normal propeller. The developers hope that this system, combined with low speed, could open up new possibilities in terms of performance, efficiency and noise. Among other things, the new propeller makes it easier to drive with an electric motor.
The first test flight of a seven-blade propeller was completed in 2016, and a nine-blade propeller was tested in 2019. In 2022 there will now be eleven leaves. MT-Propeller is unknown to the outsider, but the company from Straubing dominates the propeller market. Their five-blade propellers became the industry standard. They are used in the Cessna 425 series, the Piper Cheyenne PA31T and T1, the Piper Cheyenne PA42-1000 and the Cessna 208 Caravan, among others. MT-Propeller was founded in 1981 by Gerd Mühlbauer and offers more than 27 propeller designs, which in turn can be combined with over 220 blades. The company says it supplies propellers for over 90 percent of piston and turbine-powered aircraft manufactured in Europe.