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Eve Air Mobility completes eVTOL wind tunnel testing

Eve Air Mobil­i­ty recent­ly com­plet­ed wind tun­nel test­ing near Lucerne, Switzer­land, with a scale mod­el of its eVTOL vehi­cle, which is pro­ject­ed to enter ser­vice in 2026.

Test­ing allows engi­neers to mon­i­tor the flow of air over and around the vehi­cle and each of its indi­vid­ual parts. It is also used to mea­sure the aero­dy­nam­ic forces and moments act­ing on the vehi­cle, allow­ing the team to eval­u­ate the vehicle’s lift, effi­cien­cy, fly­ing qual­i­ties and per­for­mance.

The main objec­tive of the test was to inves­ti­gate and val­i­date how com­po­nents includ­ing fuse­lage, rotors, wing, tail and oth­er sur­faces would per­form in flight. Wind tun­nel test­ing pro­vides a unique view of aero­dy­nam­ic behav­ior of com­plex geom­e­try and pro­vides a high­er lev­el of val­i­da­tion of design char­ac­ter­is­tics.

The tests are part of an effort to acquire exper­i­men­tal data to val­i­date pro­duc­tion solu­tions, devel­op­ment tools and mod­els which also includes oth­er test arti­cles such as fixed and mov­ing rigs, fly­ing vehi­cles and oth­er wind tun­nel tests.

“The com­ple­tion of wind tun­nel test­ing is an impor­tant engi­neer­ing mile­stone as we con­tin­ue the devel­op­ment of our eVTOL,” said Luiz Valen­ti­ni, chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer at Eve Air Mobil­i­ty.

“The infor­ma­tion we obtained dur­ing this phase of devel­op­ment has helped us fur­ther refine the tech­ni­cal solu­tions of our eVTOL before com­mit­ting to pro­duc­tion tool­ing and con­form­ing pro­to­types. Our goal is to design, pro­duce and cer­ti­fy an aero­dy­nam­ic and effi­cient eVTOL that will be used for a vari­ety of urban air mobil­i­ty mis­sions.”

Eve’s engi­neer­ing team will use the data gath­ered through wind tun­nel test­ing to con­tin­ue to devel­op the eVTOL’s con­trol laws lead­ing to opti­mal per­for­mance and pas­sen­ger com­fort.

Eve’s eVTOL is 100% elec­tric and has a range of 60 miles (100 kilo­me­ters) allow­ing it to com­plete a vari­ety of urban air mobil­i­ty mis­sions. Its human-cen­tered design ensures the safe­ty, acces­si­bil­i­ty and com­fort of pas­sen­gers, the pilot and the com­mu­ni­ty.

The air­craft fea­tures a lift + cruise con­fig­u­ra­tion with ded­i­cat­ed rotors for ver­ti­cal flight and fixed wings to fly on cruise, with no com­po­nents required to change posi­tion dur­ing flight. It will be pilot­ed at launch, but ready for autonomous oper­a­tions in the future.

In March, Fer­rovial Ver­ti­ports and Eve Air Mobil­i­ty agreed to part­ner to devel­op safe and reli­able oper­a­tion of ver­ti­ports and eVTOLs.

Boris Sedacca

Boris produces the editorial content for eVTOL Insights and covers many topics, including batteries, powertrains, certification, public acceptance, landing and charging infrastructure. Please reach out to him with any potential stories via editorial@evtolinsights.com

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