CFD-Augmented Comprehensive eVTOL Analysis and Certification Tool

Recently, interest in eVTOL air vehicles has greatly increased for both civil and military applications, such as urban air mobility, cargo delivery, surveillance, disaster relief, etc. Many current designs either adopt simple momentum theory based methods for performance estimates or use CFD simulation. The former is too simplified to provide the required accuracy and the latter is too computationally intensive to be practical for typical design efforts that often involve hundreds of test point evaluations. Another challenge of eVTOL development concerns the accelerating certification. An efficient modeling and simulation tool with sufficient accuracy is required to support eVTOL design as well as to expedite certification. This proposal aims at developing a CFD-augmented comprehensive eVTOL modeling tool which offers state-of-the-art analysis and certification capabilities for eVTOL design and development. The tool will be built upon industry standard comprehensive rotorcraft modeling and simulation programs and augmented with CFD solution capabilities. The tool will come with a streamlined simulation process with (1) expanded modeling capability for diverse eVTOL configurations, (2) sufficient accuracy for practical design, and 3) certification analysis covering performance/controls/loads.