• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.49 no.2
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• pp.107-120
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• 2021

Electric-powered distributed propulsion aircraft possess a complex wake flow and mutual interference with the airframe, due to the use of many propellers. Accordingly, in the early design stage, rapid aerodynamic and load analysis considering the effect of propellers for various configurations and flight conditions are required. In this study, an efficient panel-based aerodynamic analysis method that can take into account the propeller effects is developed and validated. The induced velocity field in the region of propeller wake is calculated based on Actuator Disk Theory (ADT) and is considered as the boundary condition at the vehicle's surface in the three-dimensional steady source-doublet panel method. Analyses are carried out by selecting an isolated propeller of the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI)'s Quad Tilt Propeller (QTP) aircraft and the propeller-wing configuration of the former experimental study as benchmark problems. Through comparisons with the results of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) based on actuator methods, the wake velocity of propeller and the changes in the aerodynamic load distribution of the wing due to the propeller operation are validated. The method is applied to the analysis of the Optional Piloted Personal Aerial Vehicle (OPPAV) and QTP, and the practicality and validity of the method are confirmed through comparison and analysis of the computational time and results with CFD.