PROPELLER LOADING DISTRIBUTIONS.

The study reports the improvements made in the numerical procedure for evaluating propeller loading distributions which were developed by adaptation of the unsteady lifting surface theory. A new approach, based on the fact that the assumed Birnhaum chordwise modes are not linearly independent, has achieved stability for the chordwise distribution, which had otherwise shown no sign of convergence with increasing number of modes. Other refinements of the numerical program, including provision for arbitrary blade camber variation and overlapping of blade wakes, improved the accuracy of both chordwise and spanwise loading distributions and brought the theoretical results closer to experiment. Author