Design exploration of UAM vehicles

Abstract

This study describes a design exploration of Urban Air Mobility (UAM) vehicles, based on top-level aircraft requirements. The exploration focuses on a fully electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicle that employs an architecture of conventional airframe coupled with tilted rotors, aimed to carry four passengers. Using a low-fidelity design framework, a variety of configurations are investigated by altering design variables such as wing area, number of propellers, operating speed, and range. The influence of these variables on the design is explored from the environmental, societal and, economical perspectives for a 2050 time horizon. The findings suggest that configurations with a small wing area and a large number of small propellers emerges as preferable for minimizing energy consumption (per pax-km) and operating expenses (per pax-km). However, in terms of noise emissions, configurations with fewer but larger propellers are favoured, marking a departure from the design choices that prioritize energy efficiency and cost. Additionally, the study underscores that operations prioritizing commercial viability require high-speed cruising and reduced flight hours, diverging from those that prioritize energy efficiency, thereby emphasizing the necessity of multidisciplinary optimization. Finally, a noise-estimation model is developed to enable quick assessment of the vehicle's sound power level. The model necessitates only fundamental powertrain information as inputs and provides insights into the impact of design choices on noise emission, which is beneficial at preliminary design stage.