Propeller

A propeller (colloquially often called a screw if on a ship or an airscrew if on an aircraft) is a device with a rotating hub and radiating blades that are set at a pitch to form a helical spiral which, when rotated, exerts linear thrust upon a working fluid such as water or air.[1] Propellers are used to pump fluid through a pipe or duct, or to create thrust to propel a boat through water or an aircraft through air. The blades are shaped so that their rotational motion through the fluid causes a pressure difference between the two surfaces of the blade by Bernoulli's principle which exerts force on the fluid.[2] Most marine propellers are screw propellers with helical blades rotating on a propeller shaft with an approximately horizontal axis.[lower-alpha 1]

For aircraft propellers, see Propeller (aeronautics). For other uses, see Propeller (disambiguation).
A 'right-handed' propeller on a merchant vessel, which rotates clockwise to propel the ship forward
Propeller of Pratt & Whitney Canada PW100 turboprop mounted on Bombardier Q400
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This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Propeller, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.