Determination of the optimal arrangement of engines along the wingspan

Abstract

A modern gas turbine engine, in the layout of the designed aircraft, allows us to consider fundamentally different placement options. The contradictory influence of the type, number and location of engines on the safety and efficiency of flight leads to the need to study these tasks at the early stages of design. This article discusses an approach to determining the optimal position of engines by wingspan at the stage of preliminary design. The calculation features consist in taking into account various factors: strength, for different design cases, mass-inertial, operational-technological and others. In the course of the study, the aircraft wing power set was simulated with its subsequent calculation in the NX system. As a result of the study, the optimal arrangement of engines for a four-engine aircraft with known geometric characteristics of the wing and its shape was obtained. An approach is shown, as a result of which it is possible to determine the optimal position of the engines, both in terms of the magnitude of bending moments in the root part of the wing and moments of inertia. The same method can be used to prove or correct the already accepted position of the engines on the designed aircraft.