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Propeller influence on the aeroelastic stability of High Altitude Long Endurance aircraft

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2020

P.C. Teixeira Open the ORCID record for P.C. Teixeira [Opens in a new window]  and
C.E.S. Cesnik Open the ORCID record for C.E.S. Cesnik [Opens in a new window]
P.C. Teixeira*
Affiliation:
Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
C.E.S. Cesnik
Affiliation:
Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
*
pct@umich.edu
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Abstract

This work investigates the propeller’s influence on the stability of High Altitude Long Endurance aircraft, incorporating all resultant loads at the propeller hub, propeller slipstream, and gyroscopic loads. Such effects are usually neglected in the aeroelastic simulation of HALE aircraft. For that goal, a previously developed framework, which couples a geometrically nonlinear structural solver with an Unsteady Vortex Lattice method (uVLM) for lifting surfaces and a Viscous Vortex Particle (VVP) method for propeller slipstream, was employed to generate time-data series. Also, a method, based on a combination of Proper Orthogonal Decomposition and system identification, to extract dynamic information (frequencies, damping, and modes) of the aircraft from a time-series signal is proposed and successfully tested for a purely structural case, for which reference data is available. The method is then applied to investigate the stability of aeroelastic cases. The results demonstrate that the presence of propellers can influence the aeroelastic stability of a Very Flexible Aircraft.

Keywords

Propeller effectsHALE aircraftAeroelastic stabilityViscous vortex particle
Type
Research Article
Information
The Aeronautical Journal , Volume 124 , Issue 1275 , May 2020 , pp. 703 - 730
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Royal Aeronautical Society

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