Towards System of Systems Driven Urban Air Mobility Aircraft Design

Abstract

The objective of this research paper is to evaluate Urban Air Mobility (UAM) as a complex System of Systems (SoS), wherein effort is made to understand the impact of different fully electric UAM vehicle architectures and technologies. Thus, the effective fleet capability is evaluated for different success criteria of the SoS. The success of the SoS depends on how fast the passengers are transported in the UAM network. The impact of UAM vehicle architectures such as multirotor, helicopter, coaxial helicopter, compound helicopter, lift + cruise, tiltwing, and tiltrotor operated in a homogeneous fleet is evaluated. For such complex SoS, analytical methods would not suffice for understanding complex and often nonlinear interactions. A SoS framework comprising of aircraft design methods linked to an agent-based simulation is developed. The UAM vehicles are simulated for 24-hour operation, considering their architectural performance characteristics, payload, mission demands, energy consumption, and recharge before further dispatch. A large design of experiments, consisting of the aforementioned UAM vehicle architectures, technology scenarios, and also operational parameters, is executed for SoS design space exploration and sensitivity studies. While this paper demonstrates the proof of concept for the SoS framework, future work comprises of finding the optimum composition of a heterogeneous fleet for varied demand as well as network scenarios, and improving for higher fidelity aircraft design methods.