Enhancing a Distributed Electric Propulsion Configuration Aircraft Design with a Multidisciplinary Analysis and Optimization Approach

The aviation industry’s current push to reduce emissions has sparked interest in highly integrated hybrid-electric aircraft.Distributed electric propulsion (DEP) systems show promise in helping achieve these emission targets. However,the high integration of aircraft structure, aerodynamics, propulsion, and power supply in hybrid-electric DEP systemsnecessitates a multidisciplinary analysis approach to identify robust design trade-offs. This paper presents an extendedmultidisciplinary design and simulation environment applied to a hybrid-electric regional aircraft configuration. Thetraditional aerostructural optimization process has been enhanced to include aircraft stability and control aspects. Tomanage computational costs while balancing design and optimization trade-offs, a multi-fidelity approach is employed,utilizing both full-order and reduced-order models. Additionally, a model has been integrated to assess the flying qualitiesand aerodynamic characteristics of the aircraft within the multidisciplinary framework. The results demonstratethat the design optimization of the considered aircraft configuration is significantly influenced by constraints relatedto aircraft stability and control.