The advent of distributed electric propulsion aircraft concepts requires novel physics-based analysis methods for the modeling of the complex aerodynamic interactions between the closely coupled rotor, wing, and flap. For this purpose, the analysis tool Open Rotor-Wing-Flap Interaction Solver (ORWFIS) is developed with existing and novel low-fidelity methods. The research aims to answer how well an open rotor-wing-flap configuration can be modeled by the low-fidelity methods.

The method includes a blade element rotor model that accounts for non-uniform inflow conditions, a vortex based slipstream method that models contraction and deflection, and a non-planar VLM for the wing and flap that is coupled to MSES through a novel decamber method.

The developed method is shown to predict good results for the total system lift and system drag at low and higher angles of attack close to stall for the retracted flaps case. The decamber method is shown to successfully account for general thickness and viscous effects if solutions from MSES are available. For wings with deployed flaps, reasonable results are achieved at low and medium angles of attack, but the accuracy of the results is largely sensitive to the quality of the finite slipstream correction method which performs worse for larger off-sets of the flap from the main wing. The analysis is unable to provide reliable results for higher angles of attack for wings with deployed flaps due to convergence issues by MSES.