Unified Rotor Lifting Line Theory

A unified lifting line method for the design and analysis of axial flow propellers and turbines is presented. The method incorporates significant improvements to the classical lifting line methods for propeller design to extend the method to the design of turbines. In addition, lifting line analysis methods are developed to extend the usefulness of the lifting line model to allow generation of performance curves for off-design analysis. The result is a fast computational methodology for the design and analysis of propellers or turbines that can be used in preliminary design and parametric studies. Design and analysis validation cases are presented and compared with experimental data.