Incorporating control design for distributed electric propulsion in MDO

NASA is spearheading the efforts on Urban Air Mobility (UAM) and providing impetus to the industry to follow with concepts for the same. Several manufacturers, as well as, NASA, have come up with concepts for UAM aircraft; mostly using Distributed Electric Propulsion (DEP). However, the multidisciplinary interactions involved and the ability to utilize the distributed propulsors for improved control are not fully understood. In particular there is a need to incorporate control surface and controller design in the design framework and account for aeroservoelastic interactions. To achieve this, we are developing the ADEPt, a design optimization architecture that includes multidisciplinary analyses for integrated airframe-DEP design. This technology, if successful, can push the state of the art in UAM aircraft concept design and DEP enabled aircraft in general.