Category Filtering: 'vertiflite'
An aviation gold rush is on. The belief that advances in electric propulsion and autonomy technologies are making cheap, quiet and even fully automated air taxis as feasible as automatic elevators is fueling a frenzy of design and development of small electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. Some e-VTOLs are already flying. Others will be soon. Many more are on the drawing boards.
Pure electric propulsion isn’t the only route to aeronautical revolution — and maybe not the fastest. Aurora Flight Sciences is working to prove that with its avant-garde LightningStrike, a hybrid-electric technology demonstrator that the Manassas, Virginia, company is building under an $89M Phase II Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contract. “People are nibbling around the edges of what electric can do,” said John Langford, Aurora’s founder and chief executive officer. “This airplane drives directly to the heart. It transforms the whole configuration of the airplane.”
The hurdles are high and there is ample reason for skepticism, but tech entrepreneurs are pushing electric aircraft ideas that could lead to a new era for vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, aka VTOLs (pronounced VEE-talls). The latest entrant is Uber Technologies, the $68B cell phone app rent-a-ride provider, which recently announced it will invest in and promote “on-demand aviation.” Uber’s vision — shared by a growing number of aviation experts — is to use electric-powered VTOL (e-VTOL) aircraft as “air taxis” to revolutionize transport in and around big cities.
With rotors, ducted fans and other lift devices powered through wires, Distributed Electric Propulsion (DEP) can change the shape and performance of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft of many sizes. Advanced Aircraft Company’s (AAC) 36 lb (16.3 kg) Hercules unmanned aircraft system (UAS) has a hybrid-power gasoline engine and generator set driving eight outrigger motors with propellers for hover and forward flight.
The German aerospace industry has enjoyed global success and recognition in design and innovation over the decades.
One prime example is the Airbus Helicopters-legacy Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB) Bo 105 light, twin-engine helicopter. This had one of the world’s first rigid rotor designs, and formed the backbone of the parapublic marketplace globally for more than forty years — reaching a landmark eight million flight hours in 2014.
As described in the last issue of Vertiflite (“Lightning Strikes Aurora”), after four-and-a-half years of development, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Aurora Flight Sciences an $89.4M contract to develop, build and flight test its VTOL X-Plane. Aurora’s LightningStrike uses a distributed hybrid-electric propulsion system: a Rolls-Royce AE 1107C turboshaft (the same T406 engine as used in the V-22 Osprey) drives three Honeywell 1 MW (1,340 hp) generators through a gearbox (more than 10 kA — enough to power a home subdivision); the generators in turn power 24 electric motors, driving constant speed, variable pitch fans (18 on the wing and six on the canards). Both the wing and canard tilt for vertical takeoff and landing.
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced on March 3 [2016] that it had selected Aurora Flight Sciences to continue on in the DARPA VTOL X-Plane program. The company was awarded an $89.4M contract for Phases 2 (development) and 3 (flight test) for its LightningStrike hybrid-electric concept.
The past two months have been a turning point in electric-powered transportation.
On March 31, Tesla Motors unveiled the all-electric Tesla Model 3 five-seat compact sedan, starting at a base price of $35,000. Tesla, which shipped 50,000 cars worldwide in 2015, expects to sell more than 80,000 in 2016, but the first Model 3 cars aren’t expected to arrive until the end of 2017.
Karlsruhe, Germany-based e-volo GmbH conducted the first flight of its VC200 Volocopter on March 30 at nearby Bruchsal Airfield. After receiving its “Permit to Fly” as an ultralight aircraft in February, e-volo called its VC200 “the world’s first certified Multicopter.”
Hayward, California is the San Francisco Bay area headquarters of Elytron Aircraft LLC, owned by Oliver Garrow and Gregory Bruell, who both have backgrounds in computer software design and engineering. Previously, Garrow Aircraft invented the innovative and unique Verticopter concept developing the design over a period of 10 years until the construction of the prototype. Garrow Aircraft created Elytron in 2013 for research into combining the advantages of fixed and rotary wing flight.
