Airscrew pitch

By analogy with screw threads, the pitch of an airscrew is the advance per revolution. This definition, as it stands, is of little use for airscrews. Consider two extreme cases. If the airscrew is turning at, say, 2000 rpm while the aircraft is stationary, the advance per revolution is zero. If, on the other hand, the aircraft is gliding with the engine stopped the advance per revolution is infinite. Thus the pitch of an airscrew can take any value and is therefore useless as a term describing the airscrew. To overcome this difficulty two more definite measures of airscrew pitch are accepted.

Fig. 9.4

9.3.1 Geometric pitch

Consider the blade section shown in Fig. 9.4, at radius r from the airscrew axis. The broken line is the zero-lift line of the section, i. e. the direction relative to the section of the undisturbed stream when the section gives no lift. Then the geometric pitch of the element is 2nr tan в. This is the pitch of a screw of radius r and helix angle (90 – в) degrees. This geometric pitch is frequently constant for all sections of a given air­screw. In some cases, however, the geometric pitch varies from section to section of the blade. In such cases, the geometric pitch of that section at 70% of the airscrew radius is taken, and called the geometric mean pitch.

The geometric pitch is seen to depend solely on the geometry of the blades. It is thus a definite length for a given airscrew, and does not depend on the precise conditions of operation at any instant, although many airscrews are mechanically variable in pitch (see Section 9.3.3).