Aircraft modeling through BeX & OpenVSP

Abstract

[EN] In the field of aircraft conceptual design (ACD), various programs are used to perform the aircraft design process. Through this project, the programs BeX and OpenVSP, commonly used in the conceptual design courses at Link¨oping University, have been analyzed and compared. BeX allows to analyze the aircraft in different fields of study (cost, mission, weight and structure, sizing, aerodynamics and aircraft balancing) while OpenVSP works in the aerodynamic and aircraft balancing field. Therefore these two fields of analysis have been compared. The analysis have shown that BeX does not have accurate results in the aerodynamic calculations due to the methods used are first approximation methods, but develops more practical relations for cruise conditions that OpenVSP. Notwithstanding, OpenVSP uses numerical methods giving precision to the results. Moreover, OpenVSP allows to study the flow around the aircraft which is really relevant in aircraft design. In the aircraft balancing field, BeX performs a complete and detailed weight estimation while OpenVSP needs reference values to establish the weight of the different components of the aircraft. Therefore, it is recommended to perform the aircraft design using BeX for all the different fields in which OpenVSP does not work and use OpenVSP parallel to BeX in order to validate the results obtained in the aerodynamic field and expand the aerodynamic knowledge about the aircraft.

[ES] Este documento presenta el estudio hecho sobre el diseño conceptual de aeronaves a través de los programas BeX y OpenVSP. El objetivo de este estudio es modelar una aeronave con las mismas especificaciones en ambos programas, comparar que tipo de información puede ser extraída de ellos e investigar las similitudes y diferencias de los resultados obtenidos.