Boundary layer ingestion (BLI) is a technology where the main propulsion system or an auxiliary fan is used to ingest the wake generated by the aircraft to improve aeropropulsive performance. The STARC-ABL concept introduced by NASA uses this technology with a traditional tube and wing configuration. Even though the concept is similar to conventional aircraft, design intuition is heavily limited due to the lack of previous experience with BLI. To achieve energy savings through BLI, multidisciplinary analysis and optimization tools that consider the fully coupled aeropropulsive design are required. In this work, we optimize the BLI system design of the STARC-ABL configuration at a number of net force and fan pressure ratio (FPR) values using a coupled aeropropulsive approach. The optimized designs demonstrate the increase in shaft power requirement for the BLI fan with increasing FPR values. We show that the power requirement is more sensitive to the thrust required from the BLI system, while the stagnation pressure distribution at the wake is more sensitive to FPR.
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