Conceptual design and optimization of a solar-electric blended wing body aircraft for general aviation

Kleemann, N., Karpuk, Stanislav and Elham, Ali (2020) Conceptual design and optimization of a solar-electric blended wing body aircraft for general aviation. In AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum. American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.. (doi:10.2514/6.2020-0008).

Abstract

To design an advanced electric aircraft, a multi-disciplinary design approach is used. The results indicate that the optimized configuration can achieve a flight performance higher than that of comparable existing aircraft despite a reduced maximum takeoff mass. The design and optimization were performed using SUAVE open-source, multi-disciplinary aircraft design environment. To increase the analysis fidelity, several additions to the existing analysis methods were made. These include an improved vehicle mass estimation method as well as the incorporation of the aerodynamic solver Q3D. For mass estimation, a physics-based buildup method is used. The mass estimation considers the actual wing planform, the local airfoil shape, and wing sweep. By using the vortex lattice method AVL, the aerodynamic loads are calculated according to certification specifications. Internal forces are used to size the structural elements such as wing skin, shear webs, and spar caps. Also, all relevant component masses are included to determine the aircraft total mass and center of gravity location. To improve the accuracy of the aerodynamic analysis the quasi-threedimensional aerodynamic solver Q3D is implemented. The methods are validated by test calculation of a reference configuration. Within SUAVE, a multi-variable design constrained optimization of the conceptual BWB configuration is performed using the SLSQP algorithm. The optimization process is carried out for two different objectives, representing some of the many possible design goals

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