A Design Chain for Distributed Electric Propulsion with Increased Fidelity Structural Strength Assessment and Mass Estimation

Abstract

A design chain for preliminary design of hybrid-electric and full-electric aircraft allowed to explore different possible innovative concepts aiming to find out the best configuration with respect to top-level requirements. The aim of this work was to opportunely describe how it was possible to obtain a high-fidelity estimation of mass and stiffness properties for main wing components (spars, ribs, skin and stringers). The configuration under consideration hereinafter is a full-electric configuration of a commuter 19 passengers, which provides for 8 electric motors distributed along the wingspan, with two tip electric motors as a primary propulsive system. The design starting point was the estimation of flight loads, which come out from V-n diagram. Afterwards, in order to refine the first level weight estimation (based on analytic method) a dedicated high-fidelity structural analysis was performed, which allowed a higher-fidelity strength assessment as well. This approach allowed to verify the structural efficiency of the wing within the aircraft flight envelope and to optimize the structure components.