China’s TCab’s E20 eVTOL machine frame successfully completes maiden test flight

Shi­di Tech­nol­o­gy’s E20 eVTOL has suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed sys­tem joint debug­ging and test flight, designed with the same take-off weight, pow­er and sys­tem equip­ment as the full-scale pro­to­type.

The team suc­ces­sive­ly per­formed mul­ti­ple test stages of sys­tem joint debug­ging, bal­last dura­bil­i­ty, teth­ered flight test and unteth­ered flight test, and achieved over 320 take-offs and land­ings with the air­craft weigh­ing more than two tons.

Thanks to the team’s rig­or­ous and metic­u­lous work dur­ing the design, man­u­fac­tur­ing and equip­ment-lev­el tests and the active coop­er­a­tion of sup­pli­ers, the per­for­mance of the frame machine was sta­ble and reli­able dur­ing the sys­tem and com­plete machine tests, so the team can also con­cen­trate on the analy­sis of test data, improve­ment of sim­u­la­tion mod­el, tun­ing of pow­er unit and con­trol law para­me­ters.

From March’s bench ten­sion test to August’s com­ple­tion of the test flight of the frame machine in the heat fumi­ga­tion, the depart­ments coop­er­at­ed close­ly adher­ing to the company’s cor­po­rate cul­ture of self-moti­va­tion, dili­gence, integri­ty and com­pli­ance with prac­tice.

The eVTOL is an impor­tant plat­form for pow­er sys­tem ver­i­fi­ca­tion, flight con­trol and avion­ics joint debug­ging ver­i­fi­ca­tion. The frame machine test speeds up the iter­a­tive solu­tion to tech­ni­cal prob­lems, effec­tive­ly reduces the risk of pro­to­type flight test, and pro­motes the smooth progress of the E20 eVTOL project.

The project has now entered the stage of com­plete machine test­ing and ver­i­fi­ca­tion, and the E20 eVTOL pro­to­type has entered a com­pre­hen­sive flight test.