Aerodynamic Investigation of a General Aviation Aircraft with Distributed Electric Propulsion

Abstract

In recent years, environmental pollution has become more and more serious, mainly reflected in noise pollution, air quality decline, increasing greenhouse gases, global warming and so on. Therefore, many countries signed the 《The Paris Agreement》 launched by the United Nations in 2016, aiming at reducing the ecological risk of climate change to the earth and the survival crisis to human beings through various measures. At the same time, the aviation industry has responded positively to the call to reduce carbon emissions with a number of programs. The technology development of hybrid-electric and full-electric powered aircraft has been vigorously promoted. Due to the advantages of low noise, low pollution, high propulsion efficiency and other advantages that traditional aircraft do not have. The distributed leading edge electric power aircraft has improved the comfort and environmental protection of the aircraft, and has become a research hotspot for many research institutions, companies and universities. This paper firstly proposes a kind of distributed propeller electric general aviation aircraft aerodynamic configuration. Then on the basis of this design, Slip Grid Technology is used to complete numerical simulation of propeller slipstream. In this numerical simulation, the Reynolds-averaged Navier – Stokes equations(RANS) and standard <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\mathrm{k}-\varepsilon$</tex> turbulence model are used to complete simulation calculation of aerodynamic characteristics of the aircraft in the cruise state, take-off and landing state. Finally the effect of reducing the number of motors on the aerodynamic performance of the wing is studied when the total power of the leading edge motor is constant. The results show that: (1) The propeller slipstream increases the dynamic pressure on the wing surface, and increases the maximum lift-drag ratio and the maximum lift coefficient. (2) When the total power is constant, the slipstream generated by multiple small propellers is stronger than that generated by large propellers, and the lifting capacity is stronger.