Degree Name

BA

Department

Mechanical Engineering

College

Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and Technology

Defense Date

2019-03-08

Publication Date

2019-03-19

First Faculty Advisor

Andrew Ning

First Faculty Reader

Steven E. Gorrell

Honors Coordinator

Brian D. Jensen

Keywords

Aerodynamics, wing, engineering

Abstract

The advent of new technologies such as eVTOL vehicles is exciting. The development of fast aerodynamics models incorporating stall is one small step on the road to realizing such concepts by improving the speed of design optimization algorithms. To this end, a modified vortex lattice model was developed based on one reported by dos Santos and Marques [4]. The model was validated against experimental data found in the literature. Making use of its stall capabilities, a sample study was performed to test for any coupling effect between aspect ratio and taper ratio. This was done by calculating the lift curve through stall for three situations: first varying aspect ratio, second varying taper ratio, and third varying aspect ratio and taper ratio simultaneously. The superposition of effects of independent sweeps is compared to the effects of the coupled sweep. Substantial disparity between the two would signify coupling. No significant coupling effect was discovered between aspect and taper ratios on lift slope, though some coupling was observed to affect max lift coefficient. Significant time savings were observed when compared to CFD. Fast models like rVLMk may be used to speed up design optimization for eVTOL vehicle design.

Handle

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/uht0075

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