Methodologies for designing, optimizing, and evaluating possible unconventional aircraft configurations for future civil aviation

• Autor(a) principal: Bravo Mosquera, Pedro David
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Texto Completo: https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/18/18148/tde-19122022-155409/
• topic: Aerodynamic Shape Optimization; Boundary Layer Ingestion; Box-Wing configuration; Computational Fluid Dynamics; Configuração Box-Wing; Dinâmica dos Fluidos Computacional; Experimentos em túnel de vento; Ingestão de camada limite; Multidisciplinary Design Optimization; Otimização de forma aerodinâmica; Otimização multidisciplinar de projeto; Wind-tunnel experiments

Due to technological evolution and the development of several environmental aerospace projects, the aeronautical community has been implementing advanced design strategies, aiming to find next-generation configurations that allow mitigating the undesirable impact of aircraft on the environment. Unconventional solutions have attracted the attention of designers, and several aircraft concepts have been proposed in order to achieve ambitious goals. Given the lack of significant design experience with unconventional aircraft, Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) frameworks enable to understand the impact of various technologies, obtaining reductions in energy use per passenger-kilometer beyond that provided by the configuration itself. In this thesis, multifidelity and multidisciplinary optimization methodologies have been applied towards designing a next-generation commercial airliner, which combines a Box-Wing configuration with Boundary Layer Ingestion (BLI) engines. This project presents four fundamental objectives: (i) To understand the current design issues, methods, and evolving trends of unconventional configurations. This is performed through a compilation of information in the form of a state- of-the-art literature review. (ii) To develop a low-fidelity MDO method to determine the main geometric, aerodynamic, stability, propulsion and performance characteristics of the aircraft, based on its design requirements and constraints. (iii) To carry out Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations and wind-tunnel experiments on a scale-model of the aircraft, in order to perform a back-to-back analysis of non-boundary layer ingesting and boundary layer ingesting versions of the aircraft. (iv) To implement a high-fidelity Aerodynamic Shape Optimization method for the Box-Wing concept based on Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations. The completion of the research effort led to understand the potential benefits of the different technologies implemented on the aircraft at different levels of physical fidelity. Such information is believed to be important in determining whether a Box-wing aircraft powered by a BLI propulsion system can fulfil future aviation demands, providing also interesting and very encouraging results for further development.