Development of a methodology for tilt-rotor eVTOL design using an existing preliminary design tool

Kurzfassung

With the growing interest in Urban Air Mobility (UAM), electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft have gained significant attention from both researchers and manufacturers. This paper presents the methodology and design insights for a tilt-rotor eVTOL. The preliminary design tool described in this paper is also capable of exporting geometric, aerodynamic, mass, inertia, and propulsion data, which can be used for flight dynamics modeling and integration into state-of-the-art flight simulators. To train future pilots for nominal as well as emergency operations, the tool also sizes the eVTOL for One Engine Inoperative (OEI) condition and reserve missions. To evaluate the impact of OEI sizing on the overall design, two Design of Experiments (DOE) studies were performed: one incorporating OEI sizing and one without. The results indicate that including OEI sizing leads to a different optimized eVTOL configuration compared to the case without OEI sizing. The configuration that excluded OEI sizing underpredicted the MTOM and energy consumption by 10 % and the battery mass by 25 %. Another design study concludes that the battery C-ratings have a significant impact on the performance of a tilt-rotor eVTOL. However, with improvements in battery energy density, the influence of C-ratings on performance is reduced. Finally, the tool is validated against the NASA six-tilt-rotor concept, yielding errors below 10 % for key performance metrics.