Advances in aerodynamic and propulsive efficiency of future aircraft can be achieved by strategic installation of propellers near the airframe. This paper presents a robust and computationally effi...

Novel eVTOL aircraft configurations are picking up momentum in the emerging market of urban air mobility (UAM). These configurations feature electrical power systems and distributed propulsion architectures, both uncommon in current aircraft. As such, the design of eVTOL aircraft lies outside the bounds of current established frameworks and poses many challenges in the field of preliminary aircraft design. This paper presents a preliminary design methodology for open rotor eVTOL configurations with batteries as the power source. First, the propeller external dimensions are calculated, and then an optimised blade geometry for cruise condition is computed. Thereupon, the batteries and electric motors are sized. The design framework is then applied to an eVTOL aircraft with a design range of 400 km and a capacity of five occupants (four passengers and one pilot), focusing on the central-European market and aimed to be released in 2030. The final configuration is a battery-powered tandem-wing aircraft with 12 variable-pitch, variable-speed open rotors placed on the leading edges of the wings. These rotors rotate outboard-down and feature six blades. The power source comprises 24 solid-state lithium batteries with a nominal voltage of 500 V and an assumed energy density of 500 Wh/kg. The proposed design methodology offers the possibility of computing the necessary propeller geometry for numerical simulations in the early stages of the design, and of easily obtaining accurate estimates for the mass of the power system which can improve the overall mass estimates for the analysed configuration.

Advanced propellers promise significant fuel-burn savings compared to turbofans. When installed on the fuselage in a pusher configuration, the propeller interacts with the wake of the supporting pylon. This paper presents an experimental analysis of the aerodynamic and aeroacoustic characteristics of this pylon–propeller interaction. An isolated propeller was operated in undisturbed flow and in the wake of an upstream pylon at the large low-speed facility of the German–Dutch wind tunnels (DNW-LLF). Measurements of the pylon-wake characteristics showed that the wake width and velocity deficit decreased with increasing thrust due to the suction of the propeller. The installation of the pylon led to a tonal noise penalty of up to 24 dB, resulting from the periodic blade-loading fluctuations caused by the wake encounter. The noise penalty peaked in the upstream direction and became increasingly prominent with decreasing propeller thrust setting, due to the associated reduction of the steady blade loads. The integral propeller performance was not significantly altered by the pylon-wake encounter process. However, at sideslip angles of ±6°, the effective advance ratio of the propeller was modified by the circumferential velocity components induced by the pylon tip vortex. The propeller performance improved when the direction of rotation of the propeller was opposite to that of the pylon tip vortex. Under this condition, a reduction was measured in the noise emissions due to a favorable superposition of the angular-inflow and pylon-wake effects.

In this combined experimental and numerical study, the propeller–airframe aerodynamic interaction is characterized for an aircraft configuration with propellers mounted to the horizontal tailplane....

Operating a conventional propeller at negative thrust results in the operation of positively cambered blade sections at negative angles of attack, leading to flow separation. Consequently, accurately simulating the aerodynamics of propellers operating at negative thrust poses a greater challenge than at positive thrust. This study offers a comprehensive assessment of the aerodynamic modeling capabilities of numerical methods, spanning low to high fidelity, for computing propeller performance across both positive and negative thrust regimes. Low-fidelity methods, namely, blade-element momentum and lifting line theories, effectively predict propeller performance trends at positive thrust. However, they fail to capture trends at negative thrust beyond the maximum power output point due to the neglect of three-dimensional flow effects. Both steady and unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) simulations with [ ] perform well across both positive and negative thrust conditions, with errors below 2% for both thrust and power magnitudes near the maximum power output point. Lattice-Boltzmann very-large-eddy simulations (LB-VLESs) with [ ] exhibit excellent agreement with experimental data with less than 1% error near the maximum power output point but with significant computational costs. Conversely, LB-VLESs with [ ] offer a more economical approach to capture general trends with the computational cost of the same order as unsteady RANS. However, wall models introduce errors in modeling flow separation, leading to a 16% overestimation of power magnitude near the maximum power output point. The results highlight the necessity of using tools with increased fidelity levels when considering propeller operation at negative thrust compared to the conventional positive thrust regime.