Development and Testing of a Kinetic Formulation for Aircraft Mission Analysis

Traditional aircraft conceptual design relies on the separation of the forces of motion into lift, weight, thrust, and drag, which has proven to be a successful approach for many conventional fixed-wing aircraft throughout the years. Many novel aircraft concepts, however, exhibit strong aeropropulsive coupling effects, where making a clear distinction between the forces of motion is very difficult. This paper proposes a kinetic formulation of the equations of motion along with a mission analysis framework that utilizes this more generic formulation to deal with this problem. Two use cases, a conventional tube-and-wing and a strut-braced wing concept with stronger aeropropulsive coupling, are included to demonstrate the effectiveness of this new mission analysis approach over the traditional force bookkeeping approach. It is shown that aeropropulsive coupling effects can increase total fuel weight by 9% to 11%. The formulation of the mission analysis method itself plays a strong factor in fuel weight results, with variations of 6% to 8% being observed.