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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.

In the UK, AAM promis­es to be lucra­tive; research pre­dicts that it could deliv­er £2.1bn in socioe­co­nom­ic ben­e­fit and cut out 222m tons in CO2 emis­sions.

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.

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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