Preliminary stability analysis methods for PrandtlPlane aircraft in subsonic conditions

Purpose The present paper aims to assess the reliability and the limitations of analysing flight stability of a box-wing aircraft configuration known as PrandtlPlane by means of methods conceived for conventional aircraft and well known in the literature. Design/methodology/approach Results obtained by applying vortex lattice methods to PrandtlPlane configuration, validated previously with wind tunnel tests, are compared to the output of a “Roskam-like” method, here defined to model the PrandtlPlane features. Findings The comparisons have shown that the “Roskam-like” model gives accurate predictions for both the longitudinal stability margin and dihedral effect, whereas the directional stability is always overestimated. Research limitations/implications The method here proposed and related achievements are valid only for subsonic conditions. The poor reliability related to lateral-directional derivatives estimations may be improved implementing different models known from the literature. Practical implications The possibility of applying a faster method as the “Roskam-like” one here presented has two main implications: it allows to implement faster analyses in the conceptual and preliminary design of PrandtlPlane, providing also a tool for the definition of the design space in case of optimization approaches and it allows to implement a scaling procedure, to study families of PrandtlPlanes or different aircraft categories. Social implications This paper is part of the activities carried out during the PARSIFAL project, which aims to demonstrate that the introduction of PrandtlPlane as air transport mean can fuel consumption and noise impact, providing a sustainable answer to the growing air passenger demand envisaged for the next decades. Originality/value The originality of this paper lies in the attempt of adopting analysis method conceived for conventional airplanes for the analysis of a novel configuration. The value of the work is represented by the knowledge concerning experimental results and design methods on the PrandtlPlane configuration, here made available to define a new analysis tool.