Description of lab 05 and important take-aways:
Overall, this laboratory exercise gave the group a better understanding about power efficiency. By using the propellers that differed in length and pitch of the blades, the group was able to determine that a power usage of 10-20% seemed to give the highest propulsion efficiency (see Appendix A4-A7, data analysis tables). It seems that specifically, the amount of useful power used per power inputted was the highest at 15% of the total power. Also, it did seem that a propeller pitch of 30° had a higher propulsion efficiency over a wider range of power percentage input than the 10° pitched blades. In order to minimize energy consumption, the group will use motor percentage powers of 15-20% when moving the AEV to retrieve R2D2.
