GUST LOAD ALLEVIATION OF ELECTRIC AIRCRAFT WITH DISTRIBUTED PROPULSORS USING THRUST VECTORING

In this paper, the effect of thrust vectoring of propulsors on gust load alleviation of
an electric aircraft is investigated. The electric aircraft is composed of 6 small high-lift devices which are distributed equally along the wing span, and a cruise propulsor located at the tip of the wing. The aeroelastic behaviour of the wing is simulated by coupling the geometrically exact fully intrinsic beam equations with the Peters’ unsteady aerodynamic model. A ”1-cos” type gust is considered with various gust wavelength and speed. It is assumed that the propulsors are able to tilt their thrust vector in the pitch direction. The thrust of each propulsor is modelled using a follower force. Furthermore, it is assumed that the action point of propulsors’ thrust has a chordwise offset from the wing elastic axis. First the developed numerical model is verified against the published results, and a very good agreement is observed. The results indicate that by pitching the thrust vector, it is possible to alleviate the gust loads. It is observed that the tip propulsor is more effective in gust load alleviation than the distributed high-lift propulsors. Furthermore, the results show that the thrust vectoring frequency is dependent on the gust wavelength. Finally, it is found that if the chordwise offset is zero, the torsional load can’t be reduced by thrust vectoring, while by moving the propulsor ahead of the wing elastic axis, it is possible to alleviate all loads including torsional load.