Lilium Begins Wind Tunnel Testing on 1:2.5 Scale Jet Prototype at Europe’s Largest Wind Tunnel Facility

Lil­i­um announced this week the begin­ning of wind tun­nel test­ing on a com­plete 1:2.5 scale mod­el (40 per­cent size) Lil­i­um Jet at the Ger­man-Dutch Wind Tun­nels (DNW) facil­i­ty in Mark­nesse, Nether­lands, reports a press release. This includes for work­ing engines and flap actu­a­tors.

This lat­est tri­alling fol­lows Lilium’s pre­vi­ous suc­cess­ful wind tun­nel test­ing of air­craft sec­tions in 2021 and 2022 and rep­re­sents a major mile­stone in the devel­op­ment of the type-con­form­ing air­craft.

Start­ing in ear­ly May, the tri­al “will enable Lil­i­um to obtain a com­pre­hen­sive aero­dy­nam­ic dataset to val­i­date its flight physics and per­for­mance pre­dic­tions,” explains the release. “The dataset will cov­er the com­plete air­craft flight enve­lope from hov­er to cruise.”

The scale mod­el was built accord­ing to the lat­est Lil­i­um Jet design by TGR‑E, a provider of high-end man­u­fac­tur­ing solu­tions, sup­port­ed by aero­space design spe­cial­ist IBK-Inno­va­tion. The large size and low scal­ing cho­sen for the mod­el, allows gen­er­at­ed test data that is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the full-scale air­craft in all phas­es of flight.

The mod­el is also made pos­si­ble by the dimen­sions of the DNW facil­i­ty, which is the largest wind tun­nel in Europe, mea­sur­ing 31ft in width. Each flap is remote­ly actu­at­ed and equipped with elec­tric duct­ed fans built to scale by elec­tric aero­space propul­sion spe­cial­ist Schue­bel­er Tech­nolo­gies.

Alas­tair McIn­tosh

DNW’s wind tun­nels have been used in the devel­op­ment of all Air­bus air­craft, from the A300 to the A380 and A400M, as well as the Embraer E‑jet fam­i­ly and numer­ous heli­copters.

Alas­tair McIn­tosh, CTO of Lil­i­um, com­ment­ed, “This is an impor­tant step in our air­craft pro­gram and it is very excit­ing to see this large-scale Lil­i­um Jet mod­el with work­ing engines and wing flaps. We’ve been enor­mous­ly impressed by the coop­er­a­tion with DNW so far and the sup­port pro­vid­ed by TGR‑E and IBK.”

He con­tin­ued, “We look for­ward to gen­er­at­ing vast amounts of aero­dy­nam­ics data on the air­craft and build­ing fur­ther con­fi­dence in our design tools as we pre­pare for the start of final assem­bly lat­er this year.”

Lil­i­um announces cap­i­tal raise, to cov­er esti­mat­ed fund­ing for first manned flight of type-con­form­ing air­craft

The news fol­lows Lilium’s announce­ment ear­li­er this week of a cap­i­tal raise to enable the con­tin­ued devel­op­ment of the Jet at full pace.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.lilium.com