On the Suitability of Conventional Methods for the Aeroelastic Analysis of Novel Aircraft with Distributed Propulsion Systems.

Distributed propulsion systems (DPS) are often used in modern aircraft design. Besides their benefits in terms of aerodynamic efficiency, DPS introduce complexities associated with the dynamics of the entire system. Those stem from inertia effects, such as mass-distribution, gyroscopic effects due to the rotating propellers, and from aerodynamic interactions between propellers and wing. For such a complex aeroelastic system, it is important to characterize those effects for an accurate prediction of all critical modes. To investigate the effect of aerodynamic propeller-wing interaction, particular care needs to be placed in the fluid-structure interaction (FSI) models used since the classical methods currently available are not designed for this. Any newly proposed FSI model needs to be validated with available methods to form a prerequisite for further investigations. This paper presents the comparison of a wing-propeller model analyzed with a classical flutter prediction method in frequency domain and a mid-fidelity coupled FSI method using DUST and MBDyn. The focus is on inertia coupling effects, thus the propeller model is simplified, neglecting propeller aerodynamics. Good agreement is found in flutter velocities for various configurations of the wing-propeller model, providing a basis for further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]