Conceptual Aircraft Design and Comparison of Different eVTOL Aircraft for Urban Air Mobility

Abstract

This project is conducted within the DLR research project HorizonUAM and aims to design and compare various electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft configurations for the aerial passenger transport in congested urban areas, which is generally referred to as Urban Air Mobility (UAM). Besides a broad literature review on potential eVTOL aircraft configurations, five different aircraft configurations, i.e. multirotor, compound helicopter, lift + cruise, tilt wing, and tilt rotor, are then defined in terms of their typical performance characteristics in hover as well as cruising flight. The aforementioned aircraft are then designed with regard to four HorizonUAM specific use cases, i.e. airport shuttle, intra-city, sub-urban, and megacity. By the use of an open source tool for the design of such aircraft and underlying technology as well as cost assumptions for the near and far future, i.e. 2025 and 2050, multiple results are presented. For example, the overall weight, energy consumption, cost, and also noise are assessed. The results show that different eVTOL aircraft are required for the wide set of use cases. Therefore, a heterogeneous eVTOL aircraft family must be designed in the further course of HorizonUAM. Finally, more detailed aircraft design methods are needed in order to overcome the limitations by assuming weight and performance characteristics. Therefore, methodology improvements must be developed in future work. Also, a system of systems approach is planned to be a major part of further studies.