Textron eAviation Starts Nexus Wind Tunnel Testing

Tex­tron eAv­i­a­tion has start­ed wind tun­nel test­ing to sup­port the devel­op­ment of its eVTOL air­craft, Nexus. This will val­i­date the per­for­mance, sta­bil­i­ty, and con­trol of the vehi­cle design to con­firm pre­lim­i­nary con­fig­u­ra­tion, range, and speed esti­mates, as well as how the rotors inter­act with the vehi­cle aero­dy­nam­ics for all phas­es of flight, includ­ing VTOL, tran­si­tion, and cruise.

Rob Scholl, pres­i­dent and CEO, Tex­tron eAv­i­a­tion, said: “Wind tun­nel test­ing is a major mile­stone for the Nexus, enabling us to cal­i­brate our sim­u­la­tions and val­i­date our design. The Nexus air­craft is designed with a focus on oper­at­ing eco­nom­ics demand­ed by cus­tomers and meet­ing the rig­or­ous stan­dards of glob­al safe­ty reg­u­la­tors.

“While eVTOLs have unique con­fig­u­ra­tions in terms of their lay­out and num­ber of rotors, Tex­tron eAv­i­a­tion is lever­ag­ing the exten­sive expe­ri­ence of pro­grams like the Bell V22 and V280. The data and insights gained will allow us to fur­ther refine our mod­els and designs to design a viable eVTOL air­craft.”

The wind tun­nel test is being con­duct­ed on a 23% scale mod­el to eval­u­ate the rotors at the full range of con­ver­sion angles and pow­er lev­els, draw­ing on Textron’s decades of test expe­ri­ence from its tilt rotor, tur­bo­prop, and jet air­craft prod­uct devel­op­ment.

The tests also pro­vide imme­di­ate infor­ma­tion relat­ed to tail size, engine pow­er require­ments, tran­si­tion strate­gies, hov­er net thrust and aero­dy­nam­ic drag, clear­ing the path towards final require­ments that meet cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dards.

Tex­tron eAv­i­a­tion com­pris­es the Nexus pro­gram, its eVTOL divi­sion, and Pip­istrel, its Sloven­ian light sport air­craft man­u­fac­tur­er. The lat­est mod­el of the Nexus eVTOL is designed to have the poten­tial to serve a range of pur­pos­es, includ­ing for the pas­sen­ger trans­port, car­go, and emer­gency med­ical ser­vices mar­kets.

In March 2022, Tex­tron, home to the Cess­na, Beechcraft and Bell avi­a­tion brands, con­firmed an agree­ment to pur­chase Sloven­ian elec­tric air­craft devel­op­er Pip­istrel.

Tex­tron to acquire Pip­istrel and form new busi­ness seg­ment with a focus on devel­op­ing sus­tain­able air­craft