Application · Design study by eCon's simulation team
We gave one of our engineers a realistic brief: modify an existing two-blade propeller, then check it for thrust, strength and resonance. He built, ran and reported the complete preliminary design in econblades within a two-hour session. Then we asked him what the same job takes without it.
econblades packages the blade-design workflow eCon's engineers have built and refined over 20+ years of simulation projects – the same scripts, now in one interface.
“I set up the geometry, the layup and the load cases. econblades built and ran the aero model, built and ran the FE model, and generated the report. The whole thing took less than two hours. That puts a smile on my face.”
Gábor Zipszer, eCon Engineering
Every propeller brief starts with two limits: diameter, set by the aircraft, and rotational speed, capped by the drivetrain and a tip Mach of around 0.7. Inside them sits the requirement: this much thrust, at this power. Ours was a mid-size, two-blade general aviation propeller, modified from an existing design – the most common real-world case.
After every step we stopped and asked the same three questions: how would you do this without econblades, who would you need, and how long would it take?
| Step | Classical workflow | Who you need | Time | econblades (designer only) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Materials | Same inputs in any tool | Designer | Same | Same |
| Geometry | Python → Excel → CSV → CAD script, or profiles entered by hand, lofted with guide curves | CAD engineer, aerodynamicist | 1–2 h with in-house scripts; ~2 days by hand | ~10 min |
| Layup | Surfaces cut by hand in CAD to a structural engineer's spec | CAD engineer, composites engineer | 2–6 h simple; ~1.5 days detailed | 10–30 min |
| Load cases | Collected in Excel, re-entered in each tool | Project owner / customer | 30–60 min, per tool | 10–30 min, once |
| Calculation setup | Aero model, FE model (mesh, contacts), load mapping | Aerodynamicist, FEM analyst | 1–1.5 days | ~5 min |
| Calculation & report | Post-processing, screenshots, write-up | FEM analyst | 2–3 h to 2–3 days | 20–30 min, automated |
| Total | 4 specialists | ~2 days to 2 weeks | ~2 hours, 1 designer |
Parameters go in and the blade geometry is built in under a minute. The STEP file comes back with the results once the full run finishes. Plies are placed directly on the blade in a simplified design window, with no planes, offsets or surface splits in CAD, and the pressure side is a copy-paste.
The input is similar either way. But econblades takes it once for both aero and FEM, derives air density from the standard atmosphere and enforces the limits itself.
This is where the saving is largest. econblades builds and solves the virtual blade model (VBM) aero case, maps the loads, then builds and solves the FE model through an automated Ansys workflow and writes the report. When the aero solver started to diverge during our run, econblades reduced the relaxation factor and carried on by itself. Solver time is roughly the same either way; what econblades removes is the human time around it.
Five typical loops. In econblades, each one takes about two minutes of editing and a 20–30 minute automated rerun, and the designer handles it alone:
Classically, most of these loops go through the whole workflow above again: re-cut in CAD, re-mesh, rebuild the FE model, re-map the loads and re-evaluate. That means handing the blade across the same four specialists every time. So teams often design in spare plies up front and suppress them later, because adding a ply is too expensive. In econblades, adding and removing plies are equally cheap, so you can afford to iterate.
At the end of the session you have:
econblades is a preliminary design tool. The blade root, ply overlaps and detailed reinforcements are out of scope, and the report is not a ply book for lamination. VBM aero includes corrections, but key design points should still be confirmed in 3D CFD.
What econblades gives you is speed: it gets you quickly to a blade whose overall integrity and performance are already validated, so you can spend your time on detailed design and tuning, knowing the rest of it is very likely right.
The best way to trust a new tool is to run it on a blade you know well and compare the results with your current method. Book a demo and we'll run your blade together. You keep the STEP model and the full report to check in your own tools. Want to see the output first? Download the sample report from this study.