Comparison of Two Aerodynamic Mid-Fidelity Approaches on a Distributed Propulsion Wing

Abstract

A comparison of two potential-theory based mid-fidelity approaches on the aerodynamics of a distributed propeller-wing tractor configuration is presented. The design space for aircraft configurations is enlarged by using distributed electric propulsion, so a demand for investigating different variants especially regarding the number of propellers is present. There are already many approaches of lower fidelity available in the literature, but they are often documented only with integral results. This paper shall present two different, independently implemented, numerical approaches and provides a comparison of span-wise load distributions on a distributed propeller configuration at cruise conditions with existing RANS results. The isolated propeller and wing calculations using both methods are verified regarding their agreement a priori. Also a discretisation study on both methods is depicted. Then detailed results of span-wise lift and drag distributions are compared between the methods. Two different Angles of Attack and two different propeller pitch settings are calculated and the occurring differences in the span-wise distributions and the governing integral results between both methods and the RANS results are highlighted. Finally the comparison of the individually needed computational effort is given.