Vehicle Design and Optimization Model for Urban Air Mobility

Brown, Arthur; Harris, Wesley L.

doi:10.2514/1.c035756

Cited by 70 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…36 The u empty of eVTOL aircraft reportedly ranges from 0.43 to 0.65. 9,11,37 For simplicity, a constant u empty is typically assumed in eVTOL vehicle design and optimization, which, according to Equation 5, means that raising u bat without sacrificing the payload requires increasing GTOM as well. However, vehicle acquisition cost, the highest cost for eVTOLs,…”

Section: Importance Of Fast Chargingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenges and key requirements of batteries for electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft

Yang

Liu

et al. 2021

Joule

118

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Section: Importance Of Fast Chargingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenges and key requirements of batteries for electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft

Yang

Liu

et al. 2021

Joule

118

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“…The aircraft design in this study process consists of conceptual eVTOL sizing and performance methods, where the open source software presented by Brown and Harris [12] is used. Their conceptual method is referring to McDonald and German [13], and thus utilizes momentum theory for vertical flight segments, i.e.…”

Section: A Aircraft Design and Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, a propulsive efficiency of 0.8 is assumed, whereas it is only considered in forward flight. [12] The underlying methodology requires certain configuration specific assumptions with regard to the UAM vehicles (see Table 1). In this study two different UAM vehicle configurations, i.e.…”

Section: A Aircraft Design and Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Urban Air Mobility Vehicle and Fleet-level Life-Cycle Assessment Using a System-of-Systems Approach

Prakasha

Papantoni

Nagel

et al. 2021

Aiaa Aviation 2021 Forum

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Can Urban Air Mobility (UAM) systems constitute viable and sustainable mobility solutions? This question has increasingly been concerning scientists, companies, policy makers, and authorities as more and more UAM vehicle concepts are seeing the light of day. In order to come closer to answering this question and to demonstrate the dependencies and impacts of the numerous parameters used to describe a highly complex system of a fleet of UAM vehicles operating in an urban environment, this paper employs a System of Systems (SoS) approach. A collaborative SoS framework with an agent-based simulation is introduced, which connects the UAM vehicle design, fleet performance, vertiport network, and reenergizing infrastructure with a Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA). The framework is used to simulate four exemplary UAM fleet-operation scenarios based on two cities and two operational modes, namely urban and suburban operations. Different vehicle design configurations, e.g. multirotor and lift + cruise vehicles, are evaluated in each scenario based on respectively realistic Concepts of Operations (CONOPS). Additionally, two different points in time, namely 2025 and 2050, are considered and assessed for powering the vehicles by taking into account the characteristics of batteries as well as the underlying electricity mix for their operation. Lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide battery and lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries are considered. The SoS framework helps to asses various UAM metrics such as the average wait time for a passenger, the ideal number of aircraft needed for transporting all passengers within given time, the energy required on a vehicle and fleet level, sustainability metrics, e.g. the global warming potential associated with the energy carriers and many more. The capability to explore a wide design space and to visualize the dependencies between the system parameters and their impacts on different SoS metrics provides stakeholders with a helpful tool for their decision making.

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“…This study showed potential noise and efficiency advantages for a compound helicopter configuration over tiltrotor, tiltwing, and lift-and-cruise configurations for UAM applications. It is worth noting, however, that later work by the same authors [7] indicated potential operational cost and weight savings with higher disk loading designs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Configuration Study of Electric Helicopters for Urban Air Mobility

et al. 2021

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There is currently interest in the design of small electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft to alleviate ground traffic and congestion in major urban areas. To support progress in this area, a conceptual design method for single-main-rotor and lift-augmented compound electric helicopters has been developed. The design method was used to investigate the feasible design space for electric helicopters based on varying mission profiles and technology assumptions. Within the feasible design space, it was found that a crossover boundary exists as a function of cruise distance and hover time where the most efficient configuration changes from a single-main-rotor helicopter to a lift-augmented compound helicopter. In general, for longer cruise distances and shorter hover times, the lift-augmented compound helicopter is the more efficient configuration. An additional study was conducted to investigate the potential benefits of decoupling the main rotor from the tail rotor. This study showed that decoupling the main rotor and tail rotor has the potential to reduce the total mission energy required in all cases, allowing for increases in mission distances and hover times on the order of 5% for a given battery size.

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Vehicle Design and Optimization Model for Urban Air Mobility

Cited by 70 publications

References 14 publications

Challenges and key requirements of batteries for electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft

Challenges and key requirements of batteries for electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft

Urban Air Mobility Vehicle and Fleet-level Life-Cycle Assessment Using a System-of-Systems Approach

Configuration Study of Electric Helicopters for Urban Air Mobility

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