Archer Aviation selects Honeywell flight control actuation and thermal management

Archer Avi­a­tion has entered into an agree­ment with Hon­ey­well to sup­ply flight con­trol actu­a­tion and ther­mal man­age­ment tech­nolo­gies for Archer’s 12 tilt 6 air­craft con­fig­u­ra­tion.

Archer’s pro­duc­tion air­craft will oper­ate in dense urban envi­ron­ments with crit­i­cal pre­ci­sion from the flight con­trols and actu­a­tors, which can accept hun­dreds of micro adjust­ments and com­mands per sec­ond from fly-by-wire com­put­ers.

Enabling pre­cise nav­i­ga­tion, Archer incor­po­rates the lat­est advance­ments in tech­nol­o­gy into its air­craft to draw on its safe­ty ben­e­fits, and accom­mo­date the unique ele­ments of its elec­tric ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing (eVTOL) air­craft.

Archer has select­ed Honeywell’s MicroVCS ther­mal man­age­ment sys­tem to pro­vide sev­er­al advan­tages com­pared to con­ven­tion­al sys­tems, includ­ing low­er weight, high­er effi­cien­cy, and high­er reli­a­bil­i­ty in its size and pow­er class.

Hon­ey­well has more than 60 years of expe­ri­ence deliv­er­ing actu­a­tion and ther­mal man­age­ment sys­tems for space, aero­space and naval appli­ca­tions and is an estab­lished leader in the eVTOL seg­ment, offer­ing a full line of avion­ics, nav­i­ga­tion, elec­tric propul­sion, radar and com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tems, in addi­tion to flight con­trols and actu­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy.

Archer CEO Adam Gold­stein said: “Honeywell’s posi­tion as an estab­lished leader in deliv­er­ing advanced aero­space tech­nolo­gies will be crit­i­cal to our deliv­er­ing on our goal of cer­ti­fy­ing our pro­duc­tion air­craft in 2024.

“It is evi­dent to us that Hon­ey­well shares our belief that the key to com­mer­cial­iz­ing eVTOL air­craft is work­ing with lead­ing aero­space sup­pli­ers to ensure we can deliv­er as safe an air­craft as pos­si­ble.”

Hon­ey­well Aero­space vice pres­i­dent and gen­er­al man­ag­er for urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) and unmanned aer­i­al sys­tems Stéphane Fymat added: “Our ready-now solu­tions will cre­ate a more sus­tain­able future for the avi­a­tion sec­tor.

“We are com­mit­ted to mak­ing UAM an every­day form of trav­el, and Archer’s air­craft will help bring that vision to life.”

One week ago, Hon­ey­well and Han­wha Sys­tems signed a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing to col­lab­o­rate on unmanned aer­i­al sys­tems (UAS) and urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment in South Korea.

Ear­li­er last week, Archer Avi­a­tion and air­craft com­po­nents man­u­fac­tur­er FACC entered into an agree­ment to fab­ri­cate and sup­ply key fuse­lage and wing ele­ments for an eVTOL air­craft cur­rent­ly under devel­op­ment.