System Design Results for an Air Taxi Concept in HorizonUAM

Abstract

Onboard systems such as flight controls, power supply and avionics are an integral part of the air taxi concept being studied in the HorizonUAM project. The aim of this presentation is to give an overview of the current status of the system design. A special focus has been on the full-electric flight control system containing the powertrain components and the power supply system including the thermal management. Based on a multirotor configuration with four main rotors and two push propellers, a safe powertrain architecture was developed and the associated components dimensioned. Simulation models were used to check the dimensioning results and to study the general dynamic behaviour of the mechanical and electrical components. Three different electrical power supply variants were examined: a battery-operated power supply, a fuel cell-based power supply and a hybrid-electric power supply based on both a battery and fuel cell system. Cooling concepts were successfully developed and analysed for these three power supplies. The system design results for the flight control and power supply were achieved in different parallel design streams. The basic feasibility of each system design was verified in each associated design stream. Although attempts have been made to make the same assumptions, this has not always been possible. Thus, the different system designs and models will be integrated and harmonized to achieve fully consistent design results in a future step.