A comparative study of uncertainty quantification methods in gust response analysis of a Lift-Plus-Cruise eVTOL aircraft wing

2025-01-07

AI Summary

This study investigates the impact of gust and flight-condition uncertainties on the aeroelastic response and safety risks of lift-plus-cruise eVTOL wing configurations. A non-intrusive uncertainty quantification (UQ) framework is developed, integrating a panel-method aerodynamic solver with a shell-element structural solver to enable efficient, high-fidelity coupled analysis. For the first time, multiple UQ methods—including polynomial chaos expansion, Kriging, Monte Carlo simulation, univariate dimension reduction, and gradient-enhanced dimension reduction—are systematically compared in terms of accuracy for key risk metrics: mean, standard deviation, and 95th-percentile response. Results demonstrate that even small input uncertainties induce substantial structural response variability. Gradient-enhanced dimension reduction achieves superior accuracy—particularly for high-order risk measures—outperforming all other methods. This work establishes a reusable, validated UQ methodology to support robust wing design and airworthiness certification of eVTOL aircraft.

Technology Category

• Machine Learning: Calibration & Uncertainty Quantification
• Reasoning under Uncertainty: Uncertainty Representations
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Planning under Uncertainty

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics

Abstract

Wind gusts, being inherently stochastic, can significantly influence the safety and performance of aircraft. This study investigates a three-dimensional uncertainty quantification (UQ) problem to explore how uncertainties in gust and flight conditions affect the structural response of a Lift-Plus-Cruise eVTOL aircraft wing. The analysis employs an unsteady aeroelastic model with a one-way coupling between a panel method aerodynamic solver and a shell analysis structural solver to predict the wing's response under varying conditions. Additionally, this paper presents a comparative evaluation of commonly used non-intrusive UQ methods, including non-intrusive polynomial chaos, kriging, Monte Carlo, univariate dimension reduction, and gradient-enhanced univariate dimension reduction. These methods are assessed based on their effectiveness in estimating various risk measures-mean, standard deviation, and 95th percentile-of critical structural response outputs such as maximum tip displacement and average strain energy. The numerical results reveal significant variability in the structural response outputs, even under relatively small ranges of uncertain inputs. This highlights the sensitivity of the system to uncertainties in gust and flight conditions. Furthermore, the performance of the implemented UQ methods varies significantly depending on the specific risk measures and the quantity of interest being analyzed.

Problem

• Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) Aircraft
• Wind Gust Uncertainty
• Performance Impact

Innovation

• Lift-Plus-Cruise eVTOL
• Wind Gust Uncertainty
• Aircraft Design Insights