Study on Aerodynamic Characteristics of Distributed Propulsion System (DPS)

Abstract

The distributed propulsion system is a recent year concept used to improve Flight performance. Distributed propulsion (DP) is a type of propulsion system in which thrust is delivered by multiple propellers arranged on the wings leading edge to improve Aircraft's aerodynamic performance and decrease fuel consumption, emissions, noise, landing distance, and for better maneuverability. Several studies have reported on distributed propulsion systems but it introduces a lot of information regarding electric propulsion and development of advanced propulsion systems, Distortion of flow inside propeller blade and challenges of a Working distributed propulsion mechanism for the future Electric driven passenger and general aviation aircrafts but there was no special study happened on the comparison of DPS aircraft with any typical type of Aircraft. In this project, we compared the aerodynamic characteristics of DPS aircraft with Normal typical Aircraft. The Computational Fluid Dynamics simulation were carried out in Fluent. The meshing is Done in the Hypermesh. The study results are, for Aircraft with Distributed propulsion system, the L/D is 2.922, and for Aircraft, without Distributed propulsion system, L/D is 1.64 This study compared and shown that DPS aircraft is beneficial over other typical Aircraft in terms of Lift to Drag ratio as aerodynamics characteristic.