Eventos Anais de eventos
COBEM 2023
27th International Congress of Mechanical Engineering
AERODYNAMIC OPTIMIZATION OF WING-MOUNTED ROTOR CONFIGURATION FOR EVTOLS
Submission Author:
Gilberto Bueno Luque Filho , SP
Co-Authors:
Gilberto Bueno Luque Filho, João Luiz F. Azevedo
Presenter: João Luiz F. Azevedo
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEM2023.COB2023-0634
Abstract
In recent years, there has been a significant increase in research regarding Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) vehicles. Those vehicles, which usually have multiple rotors that are often located on wings, present several challenges for aerodynamic engineers, particularly regarding the interaction between rotors and wings. To address these challenges, researchers have been using advanced computational tools such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations and wind tunnel experiments to gain a better understanding of the complex aerodynamic interactions. Low fidelity aerodynamic tools are particularly useful during the conceptual design phase when there is still a high level of uncertainty in the product design. The tools can help designers quickly evaluate a large number of design variations, allowing them to identify promising concepts that warrant further investigation. In this paper, the complexity of the rotor-airframe interaction will be addressed from the perspective of gradient-based optimization of non-conventional configurations of eVTOL vehicles through the use of a low-fidelity tool. The main objective of this work is to develop the understanding of the influence of the rotor-airframe interaction over the aerodynamic design, and how the consideration of these effects can lead to considerably different configurations. Therefore, a low-fidelity tool developed by the authors, based on the Vortex-Lattice Method (VLM) with nonlinear viscous corrections, is used. For the geometry parameterization, a three-dimensional Free Form Deformation (FFD) method is implemented directly in Python. The aerodynamic calculation is performed by a Fortran code, which is, then, imported to the Python optimization process through a Python script and optimized using the Scipy Python library. The non-linear aerodynamic code and the parameterization through the FFD method are already implemented, enabling aerodynamic results that capture stall trends and the influence of unsteady wakes in the optimization process. At the moment of this writing, the authors are finalizing the development and testing of the coupling of the rotor model and its unsteady wake with the airframe. The results obtained so far are very encouraging. The conceptual design phase and the optimization of non-conventional aircrafts with rotor-airframe interaction is a challenging topic for the aeronautic industry. The paper aims to address the understanding of this coupling for the design phase.
Keywords
EVTOL, Rotor-Wing interaction, Vortex Lattice Method, Free-Form Deformation, Gradient-based optimization
