University of California San Diego awarded $5.8 million NASA grant to accelerate rapid development of eVTOL aircraft

A team of engi­neers from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia San Diego have received a Uni­ver­si­ty Lead­er­ship Ini­tia­tive grant worth $5.8 mil­lion from NASA, to cre­ate com­pu­ta­tion­al design tools so US com­pa­nies can increase the speed at which they can devel­op more effi­cient air taxi designs.

This three-year project will result in a set of open-source sim­u­la­tion and opti­mi­sa­tion tools which com­pa­nies can use to design the opti­mal eVTOL air­craft for their needs.

Giv­en sev­er­al input para­me­ters such as num­ber of pas­sen­gers, desired cruise speed and range require­ment, these tools will allow engi­neers to deter­mine the opti­mal num­ber and shape of rotors, wing shape, struc­tur­al design, propul­sion sys­tem siz­ing, and oth­er design aspects that yield the most cost-effi­cient vehi­cle — while ensur­ing it is safe and oper­ates qui­et­ly.

In addi­tion, the researchers will use these tools to per­form vehi­cle con­fig­u­ra­tion trade stud­ies on safe­ty, noise, and cost, to help com­pa­nies make their design deci­sions.

John Hwang, pro­fes­sor of mechan­i­cal and aero­space engi­neer­ing at the Jacobs School of Engi­neer­ing at UC San Diego and prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor for the project, said: “We will com­bine mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary com­pu­ta­tion­al mod­els of urban air mobil­i­ty vehi­cles and advanced design opti­mi­sa­tion algo­rithms to devel­op meth­ods and tools for rapid­ly design­ing safe, qui­et, and afford­able vehi­cle con­cepts.”

“Giv­en a com­pu­ta­tion­al mod­el, state-of-the-art design opti­mi­sa­tion algo­rithms can effi­cient­ly search for the opti­mal val­ues of up to tens of thou­sands of design para­me­ters that min­imise or max­imise some spec­i­fied objec­tive, such as vehi­cle oper­at­ing cost.

The team at UC San Diego is one of five aca­d­e­m­ic groups that received the Uni­ver­si­ty Lead­er­ship Ini­tia­tive (ULI) award from NASA. The grant was cre­at­ed to ini­ti­ate a new type of inter­ac­tion between NASA’s Aero­nau­tics Research Mis­sion Direc­torate and US uni­ver­si­ties, with aca­d­e­m­ic researchers tak­ing the lead on their own research projects that fur­ther NASA’s mis­sion.

Key aspects of the ULI include a focus on tran­si­tion­ing the research results to indus­try or gov­ern­ment part­ners to bring them to mar­ket; pro­vid­ing research oppor­tu­ni­ties for stu­dents; and pro­mot­ing greater diver­si­ty in the aero­nau­tics field through increased par­tic­i­pa­tion of under­rep­re­sent­ed groups in engi­neer­ing.

This par­tic­u­lar project will have an indus­try advi­so­ry board con­sist­ing of both estab­lished air­craft com­pa­nies and eVTOL star­tups. The team will also insti­tute an aero­nau­tics intern­ship pro­gram for stu­dents, to enhance and coor­di­nate recruit­ing and men­tor­ing of under­grad­u­ate stu­dent researchers across all four uni­ver­si­ties involved.

The intern­ship will be run in part­ner­ship with the Aca­d­e­m­ic Enrich­ment Pro­gram at UC San Diego, which has expe­ri­ence man­ag­ing intern­ship pro­grams for first-gen­er­a­tion, low-income and under­rep­re­sent­ed stu­dents in engi­neer­ing.

Hwang added: “We will devel­op mod­els for all aspects of the air­craft – such as aero­dy­nam­ics, struc­tures, acoustics, bat­tery, and motor per­for­mance – and lever­age these opti­mi­sa­tion algo­rithms to nav­i­gate the most com­plex and unin­tu­itive aspects of the eVTOL air­craft design prob­lem.”

Join­ing Hwang in the team include UC San Diego engi­neers David Kamen­sky, Ali­cia Kim, and Shirley Meng. The team also includes Seongkyu Lee from UC Davis; Chris Mi from San Diego State Uni­ver­si­ty; Andrew Ning from Brigham Young Uni­ver­si­ty; Jef­frey Cham­bers and Adam Grasch from Auro­ra Flight Sci­ences; and Tyler Win­ter of M4 Engi­neer­ing.

In all, the researchers bring exper­tise in com­pu­ta­tion­al mod­el­ing and opti­mi­sa­tion, topol­o­gy opti­mi­sa­tion, bat­ter­ies, acoustics, elec­tric motors, aero­dy­nam­ics, com­pos­ite mate­ri­als, and con­cept design.