“PAL‑V, Netherlands Aerospace Centre Complete Rotor Development”

PAL‑V, a glob­al leader in Fly & Dri­ve mobil­i­ty solu­tions, recent­ly announced a sig­nif­i­cant land­mark via its col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Nether­lands Aero­space Cen­tre, reports a press release. 

The release explains, “The part­ners have suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed the devel­op­ment of the rotor blades for the PAL‑V Lib­er­ty fly­ing car, mark­ing the begin­ning of the indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion phase. This achieve­ment brings the com­pa­ny anoth­er step clos­er to the ser­i­al pro­duc­tion of its rev­o­lu­tion­ary vehi­cle. The design of PAL‑V’s rotors was under­tak­en by NLR, Nether­lands’ lead­ing aero­space research insti­tute. The Institute’s exten­sive expe­ri­ence in aero­space engi­neer­ing and com­pos­ite struc­tures has been cru­cial in refin­ing the design and ensur­ing it meets the high­est stan­dards of per­for­mance and safe­ty.”

It con­tin­ues, “The rotor blades are 20 per­cent more effi­cient with less drag com­pared to equiv­a­lent blades, result­ing in bet­ter per­for­mance and fuel econ­o­my. Due to the advanced com­pos­ite tech­nol­o­gy, a set of two rotors only weighs 35.8 kg while span­ning over almost 11 metres in length.”

The part­ners have been work­ing to per­fect the blades, lead­ing up to the cur­rent phase where the vehi­cle is ready for mass pro­duc­tion. PAL‑V has already set-up a small scale assem­bly loca­tion near its Dutch HQ, in prepa­ra­tion.

Hen­ri de Vries, Senior Sci­en­tist at NLR, com­ment­ed, ”Togeth­er we have over­come tech­ni­cal chal­lenges and ensured our rotor blades are ready for pro­duc­tion. Gyro­plane blades are brought in motion by the air­flow to cre­ate lift instead of by using a motor, this is called autoro­ta­tion. So the PAL‑V blades are basi­cal­ly its wings dur­ing flight. Next to being light­weight, they con­tain a mid-hinge to fold the blades and enable dri­ving the vehi­cle on the road with a con­ve­nient vehi­cle length of just 4 metres. This makes its design unique and unprece­dent­ed.”

Robert Dinge­manse, Founder and CEO of PAL‑V, added, “With the sup­port of numer­ous sup­pli­ers and part­ners like NLR, we are now con­cen­trat­ing on final­is­ing the last stage of air cer­ti­fi­ca­tion — com­pli­ance demon­stra­tion.”

He con­tin­ued, “With an order book fill­ing the first three years of pro­duc­tion which includes pro­fes­sion­al cus­tomers as well as pri­vate indi­vid­u­als, the PAL‑V Lib­er­ty will be used to over­come the grow­ing glob­al mobil­i­ty chal­lenges.”

NLR’s state-of-the-art facil­i­ties include wind tun­nels, com­pos­ite man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ties, struc­ture test­ing equip­ment and even a land­ing strip. They have all been used in the R&D and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion test­ing of var­i­ous parts and sub­sys­tems of the PAL‑V Lib­er­ty. The part­ner­ship will con­tin­ue to play a key role as the Fly & Dri­ve vehi­cle approach­es the launch of its first pro­duc­tion units.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.pal‑v.com/en

(Images: PAL V)

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