SkyDrive Reaches 100km/h milestone as testing of its SD-05 eVTOL aircraft continues to progress

Sky­Drive has suc­cess­ful­ly accel­er­at­ed its SD-05 mod­el to a speed of 100km/h, a viable speed for the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of short hop inter-urban air mobil­i­ty.

Through a series of high speed tests, the com­pa­ny has ver­i­fied the aircraft’s high-speed sta­bil­i­ty, con­trol­la­bil­i­ty, and maneu­ver­abil­i­ty,  as well as the per­for­mance of the propul­sion sys­tems, flight con­trol sys­tems and on-board avion­ic equip­ment.

The data gath­ered through the high-speed flight test cam­paign allows SkyDrive’s engi­neers to con­firm the accu­ra­cy of the air­craft char­ac­ter­is­tics and dynam­ic behav­ior pre­dict­ed in advance of actu­al air­craft test­ing through advanced design and analy­sis, mark­ing anoth­er major step towards type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and the planned com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the air­craft in 2028.

While Sky­Drive is pleased to announce this high-speed mile­stone, the sig­nif­i­cance of achiev­ing sta­ble flight at 100km/h goes beyond sim­ply reach­ing a cer­tain num­ber on the air­speed indi­ca­tor.

As part of its press release issued today (Wednes­day), the com­pa­ny said: “Air­craft devel­op­ment begins with design and analy­sis, pro­ceeds through indi­vid­ual sys­tem tests and ground tests, and then moves on to the man­u­fac­ture of a full-scale air­craft and flight test­ing. At the same time, sim­u­la­tors are used to repeat­ed­ly ver­i­fy flight char­ac­ter­is­tics, propul­sion sys­tems, and flight con­trol sys­tems.

“Sim­u­la­tion, analy­sis and ground test­ing are all key parts of the process, but the final flight test­ing stage is crit­i­cal. There are some things that can­not be known until the air­craft actu­al­ly flies.

“This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true of high-speed flight, where aero­dy­nam­ic forces, vibra­tions, struc­tur­al loads, and flight con­trol sys­tem response all change and inter­act in com­plex ways. Flight test­ing is the only way to ver­i­fy whether the results pre­dict­ed dur­ing the design phase accu­rate­ly describe the aircraft’s in-flight behav­ior.”

As SkyDrive’s air­craft is based on a com­plete­ly new con­cept, dis­tinct from con­ven­tion­al fixed-wing air­craft and heli­copters, we can­not assume that exist­ing knowl­edge and flight data will apply. Every new air­craft needs to col­lect and ver­i­fy data through actu­al flight tests, but with a new air­craft con­cept, this phase becomes even more indis­pens­able.

Achieve­ment of Impor­tant Tech­ni­cal Mile­stones

Dur­ing high-speed flight, aero­dy­nam­ic forces, vibra­tions, struc­tur­al loads, propul­sion sys­tems and flight con­trol all change sig­nif­i­cant­ly, as do the inter­ac­tions between them. High speed test­ing is a crit­i­cal stage of air­craft devel­op­ment as it allows us to con­firm the appro­pri­ate­ness of our design and the pre­ci­sion of our pri­or analy­ses.

Flight test­ing also fre­quent­ly reveals new chal­lenges. If the data from actu­al flight test­ing dif­fers sig­nif­i­cant­ly from the data assumed at the design and analy­sis stage, it can result in the need for addi­tion­al test­ing, design changes, and even the revi­sion of exist­ing devel­op­ment plans.

Sky­Drive’s cur­rent flight test cam­paign has allowed it to con­firm the sta­bil­i­ty, con­trol­la­bil­i­ty and struc­tur­al integri­ty of the air­craft, as well as the func­tion­al­i­ty of the aircraft’s var­i­ous sys­tems.

The results show the observed flight char­ac­ter­is­tics and behav­iour match our expec­ta­tions from the design and analy­sis phase. Sky­Drive says it is pleased to have achieved high speed for­ward flight, over­com­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties of reach­ing this stage and demon­strat­ing the appro­pri­ate­ness of our design, analy­sis and test­ing assump­tions.

Sky­Drive says it is now able to move our devel­op­ment for­ward toward the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of our air­craft with a high­er degree of vis­i­bil­i­ty and pre­dictabil­i­ty.

Con­firm­ing the Abil­i­ty of a Com­pact Mul­ti­copter to Enable Urban Air Mobil­i­ty

The recent high speed for­ward flight tests con­duct­ed by Sky­Drive demon­strate the util­i­ty of the com­pact mul­ti­copter con­cept that Sky­Drive has pur­sued since the company’s found­ing. SkyDrive’s mul­ti­copter design, which eschews fixed wings, is opti­mized for use in urban air­spaces.

A com­pact design not only allows for wider flex­i­bil­i­ty in take­off and land­ing loca­tions, it also keeps the air­craft struc­ture and oper­a­tions as sim­ple as pos­si­ble, reduc­ing oper­a­tional costs and improv­ing main­tain­abil­i­ty.

The com­pact mul­ti­copter design rep­re­sents a rev­o­lu­tion in avi­a­tion. How­ev­er, while the new design brings many ben­e­fits, it also means that the air­craft test­ing can­not rely on the past data col­lect­ed from exist­ing com­mer­cial air­craft mod­els.

This makes it par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant for Sky­Drive to show that its air­craft can fly safe­ly at the speeds required for com­mer­cial oper­a­tions and also that the com­pact mul­ti­copter design is tru­ly fea­si­ble for urban air­space use.

Through these recent high speed tests, Sky­Drive has con­firmed its air­craft archi­tec­ture, which uses 12 inde­pen­dent rotors under the con­trol of a cen­tral flight con­trol sys­tem, func­tions as designed in high speed for­ward flight, a con­fir­ma­tion that fur­ther under­scores the fea­si­bil­i­ty of using the air­craft for short-hop urban flights.100km/h is not just a num­ber.

How Sky­Drive Achieved Suc­cess­ful High Speed Flight Test­ing

The suc­cess­ful achieve­ment of 100km/h flight is the cul­mi­na­tion of a long process. The capac­i­ty to con­duct safe and sta­ble high speed flight is built on sim­u­la­tions, wind tun­nel tests, ground tests, and var­i­ous sys­tem tests, all of which are required to acquire know-how and data on the aircraft’s flight char­ac­ter­is­tics.
Sky­Drive has con­duct­ed:

• An exten­sive range of flight test­ing: Our devel­op­ment expe­ri­ence dates back to our SD-03 pro­to­type. Since then, we have accu­mu­lat­ed hun­dreds of test flights
• Wide-rang­ing test pro­gram: Out­side flight test­ing, our test pro­gram also includes stand­alone test­ing of our bat­ter­ies, motors, and rotors, aero­dy­nam­ic per­for­mance test­ing in the wind tun­nel at JAXA (the Japan­ese space agency), and ground vibra­tion test­ing
• Step-by-step flight con­trol tun­ing: The real time data col­lect­ed from low- and mid-speed flights is used by our engi­neers and pilots to take cau­tious deci­sions at each stage of the flight test cam­paign on whether to pro­ceed with faster, expand­ed flight pro­files

Future Devel­op­ments

The indus­try is cur­rent­ly mov­ing beyond the phase of demon­strat­ing that such air­craft can actu­al­ly fly and into a more advanced phase of gath­er­ing the evi­dence required to show that the air­craft can oper­ate sta­bly at high speed, col­lect­ing the data required by reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ties for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, and demon­strat­ing the via­bil­i­ty of future com­mer­cial oper­a­tions.

Sky­Drive says it will con­tin­ue with high speed test­ing to expand the aircraft’s flight enve­lope at the speeds required for com­mer­cial oper­a­tion, col­lect fur­ther data and know-how, and clar­i­fy that the flight per­for­mance of the air­craft con­tin­ues to match the per­for­mance expec­ta­tions pre­dict­ed dur­ing the design and analy­sis phase. Its jour­ney towards cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and the start of com­mer­cial oper­a­tions in 2028 con­tin­ues.