A steady aeroelastic analysis of an unmanned combat aircraft vehicle conceptual design

Kurzfassung

Unmanned combat aircraft vehicles (UCAV) are an increasingly important part of air forces as an addition to conventional manned combat aircraft vehicles. UCAVs are deployed in the direct fight with weapons as well as a recon drone in combat zones. An unmanned system has a great advantage against the conventional aircraft since the system can perform an extreme flight manoeuvre which is not possible by the manned system due to the physical limitation of the pilot. Various UCAV configurations exist. Although, in this research work an UCAV with a blended wing or flying wing configuration is concerned. The reference aircraft is the DLR F17 model in real size which is developed within the DLR UCAV2010 project. It corresponds to the NASA-SACCON model. The F17-model is a blended wing body configuration in lambda-wing design with a half span of y = 6.15 m and a wing sweep angle of γ = 53°. The design is driven by the mission requirement. However, the unique aircraft configuration of the F17 leads to a special aerodynamic phenomenon of different vortex systems. This phenomenon influences the aircraft performance both for the aerodynamic discipline e.g. cp distribution and for the aeroelastic point of view, particularly control surface efficiency. This research work represents the investigation of these effects. The work of this paper shows the first study of the effect on the aircraft aerodynamic performance. The investigation of aerodynamic coefficients distribution and vortex system generation is performed both for a rigid body aircraft and an elastic aircraft. Differences of the results are discussed. Finally as part of the investigation with the elastic aircraft, the parametrical FEM structure setup is also outlined.