A Strip Theory Approach to Dynamic Modeling of eVTOL Aircraft

View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2021-1720.vid The proliferation of electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft designs destined for the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) market has led to a need for dynamic modeling tools capable of capturing the unique aspects of their flight envelope including hover, transition, and cruise operations. This paper describes a modeling approach for the tiltwing class of eVTOL aircraft. The approach builds the aircraft by component allowing for rapid model generation of many different configurations, including variations of wing size and placement, number of propellers distributed along the wing, as well as tilting and non-tilting tails with or without attached propellers. Interactions between the wing and propellers are captured using momentum theory to approximate the flow as seen by the wing. Dynamic effects, as well as differential thrust and deflecting surfaces are taken into account by employing strip theory in which the aerodynamic surfaces are divided into smaller strips with contributions that can be summed to capture moments generated by non-symmetric flow. The resulting aero-propulsive aircraft model sufficiently captures the unique capabilities of the transition aircraft and can be used in dynamic simulation for initial flight envelope investigation and control design.