Greener Aviation with Advanced Propulsion Systems (GAAPS)

The next generation of aircraft will rely on propellers that can spin at variable speeds and are not reversible, a radical departure from the constant-rpm, reversible propellers used in aviation today. This matters because new aircraft designs—from small drones to full-scale hybrid-electric passenger planes—cannot use conventional gas turbine engines efficiently. Current propellers are designed for fixed speeds and full pitch reversal, but the new vehicles need propellers that can operate across a wide range of rpm and are fixed-pitch (non-reversible). There is almost no experimental data on how these propellers perform under real flight conditions, which stalls development. If this research succeeds, it will create a public database of propeller performance data that is not tied to any specific aircraft platform. This would allow manufacturers to design and certify new propulsion systems faster, without having to start from scratch. The project combines computer simulations, advanced manufacturing, wind tunnel tests, and open-air flight testing. The work is applied engineering—it directly targets a bottleneck in making greener, quieter, and more efficient aircraft a practical reality.