FREE Download of Unisphere’s Extensive White Paper: “Wind Impact on Different eVTOL Types” 

Ger­man-based Uni­sphere has released an exten­sive White Paper cov­er­ing the wind impact on dif­fer­ent eVTOL types. As more research is car­ried out, this is becom­ing an impor­tant area to under­stand, espe­cial­ly when such an air­craft is tak­ing off or land­ing. The study focus­es on three routes that Archer Avi­a­tion aim to use when the com­pa­ny begins com­mer­cial oper­a­tions.

Found­ed in 2017 by Christoph Schlet­tig and Michael Anger (for­mer Solar Impulse flight direc­tors), the Uni­sphere team have great knowl­edge of oper­at­ing elec­tri­cal­ly pow­ered and semi-autonomous air­craft. A major­i­ty pre­vi­ous­ly worked on the Solar Impulse project, the first solar-pow­ered air­craft to fly around the world in 2015/2016, demon­strat­ing that elec­tric avi­a­tion is pos­si­ble.

Unisphere’s exper­tise lies in auto­mat­ed flight oper­a­tions and tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven approach­es to man­ag­ing oper­a­tional and weath­er-relat­ed risks. At the core of its tech­nol­o­gy advance­ments “is the Smart 4D Tra­jec­to­ry, which is the tech­no­log­i­cal back­bone for the automa­tion of human tasks in flight oper­a­tions for high­er lev­els of safe­ty and effi­cien­cy,” explains the release.

This lat­est study inves­ti­gates the impact of wind on flight per­for­mance using his­toric weath­er mod­el data, which offers the flex­i­bil­i­ty to analyse any glob­al coor­di­nate and alti­tude, unlike tra­di­tion­al weath­er sta­tions. 

Please Down­load Full White Paper

Oper­a­tional Ana­lyt­ics

The release con­tin­ues, “Four-dimen­sion­al flight sim­u­la­tions were con­duct­ed for select­ed routes in the San Fran­cis­co Bay area (e.g San Fran­cis­co South to Liv­er­more and Napa) and Chica­go (Down­town to O’Hare Air­port) over a four-year peri­od (2020–2024), con­sid­er­ing hourly vari­a­tions and day/night cycles.” 

It goes on, “The analy­sis focused on approx­i­mate­ly 35,000 sim­u­lat­ed one-way flights per route, eval­u­at­ing flight dura­tion and cal­cu­lat­ing a wind fac­tor to quan­ti­fy headwind/tailwind effects. Results demon­strate a sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence of wind on flight time, espe­cial­ly for eVTOLs with low­er cruise speeds, where even small wind vari­a­tions can have a sub­stan­tial impact.”

The study empha­sis­es that sim­u­lat­ing the entire flight pro­file is cru­cial for accu­rate flight time pre­dic­tion due to the com­plex inter­play of wind direc­tion and speed on alti­tude dur­ing the route, and points out, “ren­der­ing sim­ple wind rose analy­ses is poten­tial­ly mis­lead­ing.” 

Fur­ther­more, this analy­sis reveals sea­son­al vari­a­tions in wind influ­ence, high­light­ing the impor­tance of his­tor­i­cal weath­er data for oper­a­tional plan­ning. 

The release con­cludes, “The find­ings under­score the neces­si­ty of pre­cise flight plan­ning for ear­ly-gen­er­a­tion eVTOLs with lim­it­ed bat­tery capac­i­ty, where under­stand­ing and mit­i­gat­ing wind effects is essen­tial for opti­mis­ing route design, ensur­ing safe oper­a­tions and max­imis­ing range.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://unisphere.io/

(Images: Uni­sphere)

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