Twist to Thrust

Overview

Propellers are widely used in modern technology to generate thrust, making blade design an important factor in their performance. This experiment investigated the effect of propeller blade pitch angles of 15°, 30°, 45° vs. 0° on the thrust produced by a small DC motor–driven propeller measured in grams. Interest in this topic arose from the use of propellers in everyday technologies such as drones, model aircraft, and cooling fans, where blade angle plays an important role in performance and efficiency. The hypothesis stated that increasing the blade pitch angle would increase thrust up to an optimal point, after which thrust would decrease due to increased drag and reduced motor efficiency. To test this hypothesis, a plastic propeller was attached to a DC motor powered by batteries. The propeller blades were cut and reattached at four different pitch angles: 0°, 15°, 30°, and 45°. Thrust was measured by placing the propeller in front of a digital gram scale and recording the change in mass caused by the airflow. Ten trials were conducted at each angle, and the average thrust was calculated. The results showed that average thrust increased from 0.09 g at 0° to 0.40 g at 15°, and reached a maximum of 1.59 g at 30°. At 45°, the average thrust decreased to 0.50 g. These results supported the hypothesis by demonstrating that a moderate blade pitch angle produced the greatest thrust. Future research could include testing additional pitch angles, using a regulated power supply to better control motor speed, or measuring motor RPM to further analyze efficiency and performance.

Competition history

• CSEF 2026 Applied Mechanics (Junior Division) · Entry J-02-15

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Engineering projects
• CSEF Engineering projects
• Every CSEF 2026 project