The NASA single-aisle turboelectric aircraft with an aft boundary layer propulsor (STARC-ABL) concept utilizes a novel electrically driven aft fan that ingests the fuselage boundary-layer for increased propulsive efficiency. In this paper we examine how aerodynamic shaping of the fuselage diffuser and nacelle inlet can reduce the flow distortion at the aft fan. Adjoint-based aerodynamic shape optimization with the ARP1420 distortion metric objective is used to automatically determine the optimal shapes for minimal fan-face distortion. Single and multipoint optimizations are carried out for simplified body-duct and wing-body-duct configurations. These two configurations highlight the importance of including the wing downwash effects when designing the propulsor. The optimizations showed the body-duct configuration can obtain cruise distortion values of approximately 1% while the wing-body-duct configuration can obtain distortion values of just over 2%.
Aerodynamic Shape Optimization of the STARC-ABL Concept for Minimal Inlet Distortion
AIAA SciTech 2018 ; 2018 ; Kissimmee, FL, United States
2018-01-08
Conference paper
No indication
English
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2018
|NTRS | 2017
|Overview of the NASA STARC-ABL (Rev. B) Advanced Concept
NTRS | 2017
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