Studies on Coupled Flight Dynamics and Aeroelasticity of a Prandtlplane Configuration

Abstract

The PrandtlPlane aircraft has been recently considered as a possible candidate to foster the ambition of a greener aviation. Despite the relevant amount of research carried out in the last years, several aspects of this novel configuration still need further insight to pave the way to future applications. Among them, the coupled flight-dynamic and aeroelastic response is addressed in this work by means of a dedicated in-house framework. For the evaluation of the aerodynamic forces, an enhanced Doublet Lattice Method, able to take into account terms typically neglected by classic formulations, is employed. First, flight-dynamic aspects are considered, showing how effects of interaction between Short Period or Dutch Roll with elastic modes remarkably deteriorate the flying qualities. Then, focus is on the aeroelastic stability of the aircraft. As observed also in previous literature efforts on this configuration, flutter onset is considerably different when considering the aircraft being free in the air or fixed in space. Thanks to the adopted formulation it is shown how, for this PrandtlPlane, the aerodynamic coupling of elastic and rigid modes has a beneficial effect on flutter onset. However, the different modal properties, consequence of the diverse boundary conditions, when switching from fixed-in-space to free-flying aircraft, also play a relevant role in determining the occurrence of flutter. Whereas for the longitudinal case both effects contribute increasing flutter speed, for the lateral-directional case the variation in modal properties has a detrimental and dominating effect, leading to a flutter speedwell within the flight envelope.Finally,the work discusses the contributions of the additional terms modeled by the enhanced Doublet Lattice Method, showing how they induce a considerable effect when modeling the flight dynamics of the flexible aircraft.