Project description
New aircraft design for urban air mobility
In the realm of aviation innovation, new concepts such as electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft for urban air mobility promise revolutionary changes, but they also pose complex aerodynamic and noise dilemmas. Traditional design methods struggle to navigate these intricate interactions, hampering progress and extending development cycles. In this context, the EU-funded eVTOLUTION project will develop advanced simulation tools to optimise aerodynamics and reduce noise emissions, addressing the intricate interactions between propulsion systems and airframes. eVTOLUTION uses a multidisciplinary approach, integrating low-, mid- and high-fidelity simulations with data-driven models for efficient design and optimisation. By combining experimental and numerical validations, the project aims to streamline the design process.
Objective
This project supports the digital transformation of aircraft design by developing new multi-disciplinary and multi-fidelity simulation tools that will enable novel aircraft architectures with improved aerodynamics and reduced noise emissions. This project addresses more specifically the design issues of electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing aircraft developed for Urban Air Mobility, but the innovative design/optimization framework that are proposed in this project are equally applicable to other novel aircraft architectures, such as those based on Distributed Electric Propulsion, Boundary Layer Ingestion, or open rotors. One common issue for most novel aircraft concepts is indeed the complexity of the aerodynamic and acoustic interactions between the lift-thrust systems and the airframe.
eVTOLUTION is designed as a low-to-mid-TRL enabler project meant to develop the knowledge, data, tools, and methods that are necessary to understand, model, and optimize aerodynamic and aeroacoustic installation effects. The main objective of the project is to implement and demonstrate a novel design and optimization framework, built upon three pillars: (i) exploit the strengths of low-, mid-, and high-fidelity simulation methods at each phase of the design; (ii) accelerate the optimizations while preserving robustness thanks to data-driven surrogate models combined with physical models; and (iii) further consolidate the accuracy and robustness of the design and optimization using advanced experimental/numerical cross-validation and training methodologies.
The realization of these objectives will be achieved through design exercises, defined by the consortium under the guidance of its aircraft manufacturers. The analysis of the design exercises will permit quantifying the gains achieved in terms of design cycle time, prediction accuracy, optimization robustness, the efficiency of the noise-mitigation technologies, and eventually the acceleration of the certification process.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringaerospace engineeringaircraft
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringaerospace engineeringaeronautical engineering
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencessoftwaresoftware applicationssimulation software
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinator
2628 CN Delft
Netherlands