Propeller design for urban drones

Rapid development of urban drone technology allowed many aerodynamics, materials science and computational optimization studies. Propeller designs for open spaces are challenged in restricted and turbulent urban environments. Compared to these city drones, advanced propeller designs with optimized shapes and brand new materials demonstrate significant safety, noise reduction and aerodynamic performance improvements during operation. This research studies propeller design for urban drones featuring tapered blades, different twist angles and bio-inspired trailing edges. These enhancements increase thrust production and reduce tip vortex formation reducing aerodynamic inefficiencies and noise. Typical city flight under such conditions results in significant gains in flight efficiency and noise reduction during PIV and wind tunnel experiments. Furthermore, the computational techniques such as multi-objective genetic algorithms and neural network models speeded up the design process and allowed finding the optimal pitch distributions and blade shapes that balance efficiency and noise. Experiments arranged in organized tables compare thrust-to-power ratios and dB levels for various design approaches. The review considers how to bring such advances to market while adhering to quality and regulatory standards as urban air mobility (UAM) and the need for robust propeller systems in turbulent city environments increase.