Cylinder operation to create rotational zone drone propeller

Using SimScale CAD & Meshing
1

Hi everyone,

I’m new to SimScale and currently working on a project where I simulate the airflow generated by the propellers of a drone I use for aerosol sampling. My goal is to determine the height above the drone where the propeller-induced airflow becomes negligible (i.e., less than 1 m/s), so I can position my instruments accurately.

I’ve been going through the tutorials, but I’m running into trouble when trying to create the rotational zones using my own CAD geometry. Specifically, when I try to create a cylinder by selecting faces, the resulting shape doesn’t look right—it doesn’t match the examples and doesn’t seem to represent the propeller’s rotational area correctly.

Any advice on how to properly define the rotational zone for this drone?

image
image1554×780 82.2 KB

(https://www.simscale.com/workbench/?pid=1452533486840011248&dcs=30178452-4e35-454f-afa9-0501481356c9)

Thanks in advance!
Christian

2

Hi!

Given that you have only 2 blades, I would suggest that you use the “Custom” option to define cylinders CAD Edit | CAD Preparation & Upload | SimScale

Cheers

3

Hi Ricardo,

Thanks for your help.

Due to the complex geometry of the propeller blades, I’m having trouble defining the “custom” parameters needed to manually create the four rotational zones. I think I’ll go back to Fusion and try duplicating the existing propellers, rotating each by 90 degrees to see if that simplifies things.

Previously, I worked with other two-blade drone propellers where the “by faces” option worked perfectly, so I assumed there might be a similarly easy fix in SimScale—something like defining the cylinder axis direction to help the software generate the correct rotation zone.

Thanks again for your support.