High-fidelity MDO considering propeller-wing interaction (Hyundai. 5/2021 to 5/2022)

The objective is to develop a high-fidelity MDO suite to maximize the aerodynamic performance of eVTOL wings with OpenFOAM. Specifically, this study aims to investigate the impact of propeller location, size, and thrust profile on the aerodynamic performance of eVTOL wings. DAFoam is used to conduct the aerodynamic optimization and an animation of optimization results is shown below. We showed that the coupled wing-propeller optimization achieve 11.4% more drag reduction, than optimizing only the wing. The main benefit is from moving the propeller to the tip of the wing to compensate the wing-tip vortex.

Publications:

• H. U. Koyuncuoglu, P. He. Simultaneous wing shape and actuator parameter optimization using the adjoint method. Aerospace Science and Technology, 2022. doi:10.1016/j.ast.2022.107876