Aircraft Controllability Through High-Lift Propellers

The current era of electrification of the aerospace industry brings many challenges, but also brings forward radically new aircraft designs. The new eVTOL and eSTOL concepts were enabled by the distributed electric propulsion. Even though eVTOL and eSTOL projects are gaining a lot of attention, another concept is also notable. The so-called High-Lift propulsion is based on the increase of airflow over the wing, thus reducing landing speed. Most notable example is NASA’s X-57 Maxwell. However, this concept can be used to control the aircraft as well. This paper introduces new approach of aircraft control using distributed High-Lift propulsion concept. The controller uses differential thrust to completely control the aircraft states and therefore eliminates the need for traditional control surfaces.