Flight Performance Maneuver Planning for NASA’s X-57 “Maxwell” Flight Demonstrator – Part 1: Power-Off Glides

Borer, Nicholas K ; Cox, David E ; Wallace, Ryan D

关键词: AERODYNAMIC CHARACTERISTICS;    AIRSPEED;    ANGLE OF ATTACK;    COMBUSTION;    DESIGN ANALYSIS;    DRAG;    ELECTRIC PROPULSION;    ENERGY CONSUMPTION;    ERROR ANALYSIS;    FLIGHT CHARACTERISTICS;    FLIGHT TESTS;    HIGH SPEED;   

RP-ID  :  NF1676L-31784

学科分类：航空航天科学

美国|英语

来源: NASA Technical Reports Server

【 摘 要 】

Distributed Electric Propulsion technology is expected to yield up to a fivefold increase inhigh-speed cruise efficiency for NASA’s X-57 “Maxwell” flight demonstrator when comparedto a combustion-powered general aviation baseline. A portion of this increased efficiency isdue to beneficial aero-propulsive interaction inherent to the distributed propulsionarchitecture. The measure of the relative increase in efficiency between a conventional anddistributed propulsion wing will be extracted from comparisons between flight test data fromthe electrically powered X-57 Mod II configuration with a conventional wing, and from theelectrically powered X-57 Mod III/IV configuration with a distributed propulsion wing. Flighttest maneuvers that accommodate errors in instrumentation and the flight test environmentare developed to establish the power-off drag characteristics for all X-57 configurations.Analysis of these maneuvers with typical errors, including pilot-in-the-loop simulation datathat incorporates simulated atmospheric turbulence effects, shows that the proposed power-offflight maneuvers can generate accurate power-off drag predictions for the X-57. Thesepredictions show that the power-off differences in aerodynamic performance between theconventional and distributed propulsion configurations can be accurately measured fromflight test data in the presence of typical data error sources.