Numerical Analysis of a Large Scale Distributed Propulsion Experiment at High Lift
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Distributed propulsion configurations are a promising concept for future aircraft systems, promising a significant increase in overall aircraft efficiency and thus a reduction in emissions. In doing so, distributed propulsion configurations offer an enlarged design space. A major challenge is the unsteady propeller-propeller and propeller-wing interactions. To investigate this in more detail, such a DP configuration at high lift has been experimentally tested in previous studies. The wind tunnel model consists of a two element wing c = 0.8 m with three co-rotating propulsion units with a diameter of D = 0.6m. The focus of this work is to further exploit the experimental data using numerical methods of different complexity of the propeller (Actuator Disc, steady-state RANS and unsteady RANS). The aim is to provide an evaluation of a well-founded and reliable qualitative and quantitative prediction of the distributed propulsion configurations. Isolated propeller simulations, including low-order BEMT and CFD calculations, were performed. While CFD results for thrust and power coefficients align well with experimental data, BEMT overestimates them. This is significant as BEMT data is also used as input in actuator disc calculations. The distributed propulsion setup was numerically analysed, showing how experimental drive strut-system affects results based on propeller position relative to the wing. Although trends like positioning are reproduced, the absence of wind tunnel walls in the numerical setup means the results aren't directly comparable to experiments. Finally, an unsteady distributed propulsion model with fully resolved propellers showed that blade loading is well captured in RANS compared to URANS, with global parameters like lift also predicted accurately. Further studies are needed to address local effects at different operating points that RANS can not model.