Flight Dynamic-Aeroelastic Response of a Highly Flexible Aircraft with Distributed Propellers

Within the emergent electric aircraft market, Distributed Electric Propulsion (DEP) is a promising concept. It provides benefits in terms of aerodynamics and propulsive efficiency, noise reduction, and vehicle control [1]. Some of the new aircraft concepts applying DEP have high aspect ratio wings for improved efficiency. The light structure, in conjunction with the large propellers and motors mass and inertia, results in an enhanced structural flexibility of the wing, which can lead to an interaction between elastic deformations and rigid body flight dynamics that favors aeroelastic instabilities. This interaction may in turn be intensified by the gyroscopic effects induced by the propellers rotation, and the propellers aerodynamics.