Calibration and Validation of a Rotorcraft Design and Analysis Tool for Electric Powered Multirotor Configurations
Open Access
- Author:
- Topper, Evan
- Graduate Program:
- Aerospace Engineering
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- January 07, 2022
- Committee Members:
- Amy Pritchett, Program Head/Chair
Joseph Francis Horn, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Jacob Willem Langelaan, Committee Member
Edward Smith, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Multirotor
NDARC
Simulation
Validation
eVTOL
Rotorcraft - Abstract:
- The software known as NASA Design and Analysis of Rotorcraft (NDARC) had been thoroughly tested and validated for use in sizing and low-fidelity performance analysis of large-scale traditional rotorcraft and fixed-wing aircraft. As small-scale (less than 10lbs), multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have increased in popularity and use, the need for a low-fidelity design tool that can provide rapid and accurate results has increased so that designers can improve their designs. This thesis demonstrates that NDARC can serve as this design tool and details a process to tune the model. NDARC was tuned to match wind tunnel data for two different quadrotor UAVs, the DJI Phantom and the SUI Endurance. Through this process, important parameters for tuning the model were identified along with potential design improvements, including rotor-to-rotor interference effects and relocating the center of gravity to generate equal thrust on the front and rear rotors in forward flight, respectively. Using the knowledge gained from tuning the UAVs, the process was then applied to a piloted multirotor passenger urban air mobility (UAM) aircraft featuring four lift rotors, a pusher propeller, wings, and tails. Because there is no public data available to validate NDARC against for the selected aircraft, a high fidelity model, the Distributed Electric Propulsion Simulation (DEPSim), was used to generate data that could be compared directly with the NDARC model. Again, it was proven that NDARC can serve as a viable low-fidelity design tool for these larger, novel rotorcraft by demonstrating good matching with DEPSim. Areas for design improvement were also identified. Primarily, it was seen that increasing the solidity of the lift rotors and moving the location of the horizontal tail could provide marked improvement as aerodynamic interference effects relating to the rotors are influential on the performance of the aircraft.