Blog 1: Start Your Engines!
Going subsonic: Why drones have their distinctive hum and how propeller design can help fix it.
Blog 1: Start Your Engines!
My name is Benjamin H, and I have long been an avid engineer, programmer, and 3D designer. I am intrigued by drones, especially because of the wide range of technologies needed to make them fly at all: aerodynamics needed to produce useful propellers, connectivity to allow remote control features, smart computer chips and software to control drone components, and the ever-shrinking batteries and motors that provide power to everything else. Combining such a nebulous product with my own various interests will allow me to exercise my expertise and build skills across disciplines, so I have chosen drone design to be the focus of my project.
I will be interning with a drone and airplane education company, the Pilot Institute. There, I will be taking advantage of the many drone flight courses to learn how drones work and how they are piloted today, as well as the high-tier 3D Printers available for projects. My project will focus on optimizing propeller design, specifically in terms of increasing thrust while decreasing noise. This will involve researching propeller designs, both real and theoretical, designing those propellers with 3D design software, and printing those propellers for testing.
My final product will take two forms. I will be compiling my data into a report on what I find to be the best propeller design for 3D printing, then producing four such propellers for use in a model quadcopter drone. For information about my internship location, including the drone courses at my disposal, below is the link for the Pilot Institute website: https://pilotinstitute.com.
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