Moya Aero eVTOL prototype limbers up for first flight

Moya Aero plans to per­form its first flight dur­ing the spring­time in the South­ern Hemi­sphere, an almost full-scale vehi­cle with a wingspan of 5.5 metres. In the mean­time, it is improv­ing its facil­i­ties at the test­ing area of Air­field SDA4 Fazen­da Maris­tela.

Last week, the team had train­ing ses­sions at the Autopi­lot Sys­tem sup­pli­er to adjust the vehi­cle’s con­trol loops. The air­craft’s cen­tral parts, such as wings and fuse­lage, are man­u­fac­tured with com­pos­ite mate­ri­als, main­ly car­bon fibre and epoxy resin, through mod­i­fi­ca­tions for lam­i­na­tion to make it lighter and more effi­cient.

Thus, with the use of com­pos­ite mate­r­i­al, there will be more reli­a­bil­i­ty and a reduc­tion in com­po­nents and mass with­out com­pro­mis­ing air­frame stiff­ness. The advan­tage is weight reduc­tion and a greater pay­load capac­i­ty and range.

Moya Aero CEO Alexan­dre Zaramela said: “We have already built around 90% of the struc­ture in com­pos­ite mate­r­i­al, ready to go to the paint shop in our facil­i­ties in São José dos Cam­pos.

“Our col­leagues will ded­i­cate the final days to pro­duc­ing the last fair­ings and land­ing gear, spe­cial­ly devel­oped for the vehi­cle. At the same time, the wiring of the pow­er sys­tems bat­ter­ies and engines are ready. The team is build­ing a small drone to per­form test flights for autopi­lot ver­i­fi­ca­tion to save time and allow slight adjust­ments before the first flight.”

The com­pa­ny explored sev­er­al trade-offs dur­ing the engi­neer­ing design phase through para­met­ric stud­ies using com­pu­ta­tion­al flu­id dynam­ics, whose pri­ma­ry pur­pose is to explore the design of an inno­v­a­tive con­fig­u­ra­tion, such as the shape of the wing plan, wingspan, and wing inci­dence.

The com­pa­ny has analysed the hor­i­zon­tal flight configuration’s drag to obtain the most appro­pri­ate fuse­lage con­fig­u­ra­tion. The design reduces the total drag by over 50% com­pared to oth­er eVTOL Lift + Cruise con­fig­u­ra­tions.

In con­sul­ta­tion with Brazil’s Uni­ver­si­dade Fed­er­al de Viçosa, the pro­gramme aimed to build an ongo­ing oper­a­tion in agri­cul­ture. The com­pa­ny has also start­ed a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process with ANAC, the Brazil­ian avi­a­tion author­i­ty.

Moya’s eVTOL pro­gramme is spon­sored by FINEP, a Brazil­ian gov­ern­ment organ­i­sa­tion that pro­motes sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, and inno­va­tion. Moya eVTOL is on track to be the first high-capac­i­ty car­go drone to fly in Latin Amer­i­ca.

In April, Helisul Avi­a­tion signed for 50 Moya Aero eVTOLs, an all-elec­tric autonomous car­go drone with a pay­load capac­i­ty of 200 kg and a range of 110 kilo­me­tres.

Helisul Avi­a­tion to pur­chase 50 Moya eVTOLs