CycloTech launches advanced propulsion system concept for air taxi purposes

Propul­sion sys­tems devel­op­er CycloTech has launched an advanced con­cept which it says will be a ‘game-chang­er’ for var­i­ous appli­ca­tions, includ­ing air taxis and the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket.

The Aus­tri­an research and devel­op­ment com­pa­ny says it is trans­form­ing the Voith Schnei­der pro­peller (VSP) into a rev­o­lu­tion­ary, supe­ri­or propul­sion sys­tem (Cyclo­gy­ro rotor) for the avi­a­tion indus­try.

Over the last three years, the com­pa­ny has devel­oped and test­ed nine dif­fer­ent rotor pro­to­types and will per­form a fly­ing demon­stra­tion using the patent­ed tech­nol­o­gy at the end of this year.

CycloTech’s vision is to com­bine the ben­e­fits of rotary and fixed-wing con­cepts, by bring­ing togeth­er VTOL, fast and effi­cient for­ward flight, and extreme­ly high manoeu­vra­bil­i­ty.

It says that ‘Cyclo­gy­ro rotors are the per­fect eco­log­i­cal solu­tion to meet the needs of the mar­ket, either as a stand-alone propul­sion sys­tem or in com­bi­na­tion with con­ven­tion­al con­cepts.’

Describ­ing the tech­nol­o­gy on its web­site, a Cyclo­gy­ro-Rotor has sev­er­al wings rotat­ing around a cen­tral rota­tion axis at con­stant speed. These wings are con­nect­ed to a freely rotat­ing hub via con­rods.

An eccen­tric posi­tion of the hub caus­es a peri­od­ic change of the pitch angle of attack of a wing dur­ing one rev­o­lu­tion, there­by gen­er­at­ing accel­er­at­ed air­flow and cre­at­ing thrust.

The dis­tance between the two rota­tion axes deter­mines the thrust mag­ni­tude and the posi­tion of the hub in periph­er­al direc­tion deter­mines the thrust direc­tion.

CycloTech says its con­trol sys­tem enables pre­cise posi­tion­ing of the hub with­in frac­tions of a sec­ond – 360° around the rota­tion axis – mak­ing the Cyclo­gy­ro rotor the most agile propul­sion sys­tem.

CycloTech’s all-elec­tric, four-seat air taxi demon­stra­tor has a max­i­mum take-off weight (MTOW) of 2,200kg and a pay­load of 400kg. Mea­sur­ing sev­en metres in length and five metres wide, the air­craft fea­tures four rotors and can trav­el at a cruise speed of 150km/h for 85km.

The cur­rent spec­i­fi­ca­tion of its pro­to­type states that it has five blades rotat­ing at 3,000rpm, with a max­i­mum thrust of 189N.

The com­pa­ny added that the cost-ben­e­fit cal­cu­la­tions based on the Air­bus Vahana con­fig­u­ra­tion trade study demon­strate a 20 per cent cost reduc­tion com­pared to tilt-wing or full elec­tric heli­copter con­cepts.

The flight demo sched­uled for lat­er this year will also show­case its abil­i­ty to cus­tomise the rotors for dif­fer­ent appli­ca­tions, which also includes aer­i­al inspec­tion and search-and-res­cue.

Found­ed in 2004, CycloTech is led by CEO Hans-Georg Kin­sky and con­sists of 15 inter­na­tion­al engi­neers under­tak­ing intense research, devel­op­ment, and test­ing. 

For more infor­ma­tion about CycloTech, vis­it https://www.cyclotech.at/