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Thread: Torque reaction
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Old 5th Jun 2021, 02:53
  #12 (permalink)  
Pilot DAR
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Helicopter tail rotors are very different to airplane propellers, as they have a quite different role. The blades have little if any twist, So much of the blade will always be at a non optimum AoA relative to the entering airflow. But this allows it to create thrust in either direction, and to have low drag when not called upon to create much thrust (cruise flight). They are also necessarily much lighter that propellers. The thrust produced by a tail rotor can be calculated by knowing dimensions, and the torque it is balancing.

Propellers, on the other hand, are much more optimized, so that in the normal operating conditions, they are highly efficient, and will transmit much more power effectively into the air. This is why airplane propellers have pretty poor efficiency when selected into reverse. Only the outboard portion of the blade is reversing the airflow, while the inboard is still making forward thrust (otherwise, air cooled piston engines would get really hot really fast when the prop is selected into reverse. So you'll get a horribly inefficient doughnut airflow with propeller reverse thrust, but reasonably similar, though less efficient thrust either way with a tailrotor. It's all a tradeoff.

Tail rotors can be lighter construction, as the blades are less constrained relative to their axis. Two bladed tail rotors can teeter, and multi blade tail rotors may have flapping and lead/lag freedom, which relieves immense forces when the axis changes, but would not work at all for an airplane propeller.

So apples to oranges....
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