Thought Leadership: How Digital Engineering can help eVTOL Development Take Off
By Prem Andrade, Distinguished Engineer, Ansys
Advanced air mobility (AAM) is ushering in new innovations for the aerospace sector, and eVTOL aircraft are emerging at the forefront of this thanks to their sustainability and efficiency benefits.
But next-generation products come with next-generation challenges. Across an eVTOL’s design cycle, from initial development to manufacturing and training, engineers face a host of challenges. Solving these requires more than a fragmented suite of tools; rather, a seamless end-to-end workflow on a digital thread is needed. And to enable this, organisations can rely on digital engineering – from concept to take-off
Ensuring effective planning
Before an eVTOL is built, an organisation needs to lay out its mission planning and concept selection to ensure the initial design meets regulations and objectives. Safety, of course, underpins this process. Engineers cannot simply take a chance on the design; they need to know that this highly complex product is validated for use, and that every variable has been considered.
Leveraging digital engineering at this stage can be the difference between an eVTOL operating safely or dangerously. Engineers can use digital engineering to define the product’s mission with a system-of-systems approach; in essence, this is a collection of systems that work in tandem to achieve a common goal, and it provides teams with a holistic and detailed view into the product and its
behaviour.
Engineers can, for instance, create realistic simulations of an eVTOL system to experiment, and mitigate potential variables or points of failure. They can also ensure an eVTOL meets certain requirements. For example, designs must now consider emerging requirements like connectivity to other air vehicles, satellites, and base stations.
What streamlines the mission and concept process is a system architecture model. This acts as a single source of truth and can be cloud-based; it can also be integrated with engineering analysis workflows to ensure everyone is working from the same baseline. By leveraging this, organisations can support cross-functional collaboration, break down silos, and shorten the overall product lifecycle.
Enabling design optimisation
Once the mission has been established, it’s time to optimise an eVTOL’s design. Organisations have two key challenges here. Firstly, they must ensure that every sub-system of the craft – including propulsion, flight dynamics, sensors, guidance navigation, and control systems – is interoperable.
Secondly, each sub-system must undergo its own specific and rigorous tests. For instance, an electro-optical infrared (EOIR) sensor requires electromagnetic, optical, thermal, structural, and aerodynamic analyses to validate its safety and effectiveness.
With digital engineering, organisations can develop hardware and software models to verify individual elements, and ensure they all work in tandem. Low fidelity models are simple to start with as they’re less detailed, and provide an overall idea as to how the design will operate.
Then, engineers can dive deeper into how elements could behave or react in certain scenarios with detailed high fidelity models. For example, eVTOLs could be tested to see how they can operate in smog, or how fast they can travel for emergency care.
Though these higher fidelity models offer a comprehensive view into an eVTOL’s behaviour, they can be time consuming to develop and run, especially when numerous tests are required.
To mitigate this challenge and accelerate workflows, engineers can look to artificial intelligence (AI). The technology can draw from real-world data to constantly improve predictive accuracy and improve decision-making without compromising on reliability.
When leveraged in conjunction with simulation technologies, AI can help produce an optimised design in a shorter timeframe.
Minimising maintenance downtime
eVTOL challenges don’t end at the production stage; organisations need insight into the aircraft’s health, and any potential maintenance, to ensure safety and effectiveness.
Degradation from exposure to the elements, battery decline, and general wear and tear are all issues manufacturers must account for, and know how to rectify, before they evolve into major problems. Here, engineers can again turn to a digital twin.
This is a hyper-realistic virtual model of a product that uses data to constantly update and mirror its real-world counterpart.
Say an eVTOL’s battery is on the verge of breaking down; the digital twin can extract this data, usually from sensors on the product, and update itself to reflect this.
That way, engineers can look at the digital twin and quickly pinpoint health concerns. Beyond catching immediate issues, digital twins can help to predict breakdowns and forecast proactive maintenance to ensure the eVTOL is always operating effectively, and isn’t taken out of action at the last minute.
Bringing eVTOLs into the mainstream can’t happen without the right tools and technologies. Thankfully, digital engineering is now empowering organisations to put their AAM plans into action; engineers can innovate, design, develop and validate faster and more accurately, whilst ensuring a safe product. And by doing so, they’re helping usher in a new era for the aerospace industry.