Stability & control derivatives prediction for box wing aircraft configurations

Master thesis (2019)

Authors

R.J. Groot Aerospace Engineering

Contributors

A. Raju Kulkarni Flight Performance and Propulsion - Aerospace Engineering (mentor)
G. la Rocca Flight Performance and Propulsion - Aerospace Engineering (mentor)
L.L.M. Veldhuis Flight Performance and Propulsion - Aerospace Engineering (graduation committee member)
S.J. Hulshoff Aerodynamics - Aerospace Engineering (graduation committee member)
Faculty
Aerospace Engineering, Aerospace Engineering
Copyright: © 2019 Roy Groot
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Published Date

08-10-2019

Language

English

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Faculty

Aerospace Engineering

Abstract

In early design stages of aircraft, component sizing is to a large extent based on semi empirical methods, which are generally lacking for unconventional aircraft configurations. This increases the uncertainty of the performances of the generated design, such as its stability and controllability. This work aims at using a more physics-based approach for predicting stability and control derivatives estimation during early design stages. A 3D panel method is chosen, which predicts the stability and control derivatives 32% more accurate than a vortex lattice solver. An acceptable run time is achieved by creating a new version of an in-house Knowledge Based Engineering tool, which reduced pre-processing time by 96% compared to manual use of the analysis tool. This methodology is then used to predict the stability and control derivatives of two box wing aircraft, and one conventional aircraft, which have been designed for similar requirements.