Sensitivity analysis of urban air mobility mission requirements over the past few years the concept of utilizing advanced, small vertical takeoff and landing vtol aircraft for on-demand transportation…

This is a $146,988.00 cost-plus-fixed-fee delivery order contract issued by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Langley Research Center to the National Institute of Aerospace Associates (NIA), a non-profit research organization. The contract is for a sensitivity analysis of the technology requirements for electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft to support urban air mobility (UAM) missions, including both intra-city and inter-city flights. The analysis is intended to expand upon prior work focused solely on the Dallas, TX area by examining requirements for other urban locations and longer-range, hybrid-electric missions. Georgia Tech Research Corporation, a non-profit research and educational institution, is a major subcontractor supporting this effort. The contract does not have a set-aside designation.

Sensitivity analysis of urban air mobility mission requirements over the past few years the concept of utilizing advanced, small vertical takeoff and landing vtol aircraft for on-demand transportation has been growing in popularity. Advances in electric propulsion systems, automation autonomy, manufacturing, and other technologies may converge to provide novel vtol aircraft configurations that are affordable, safe, and quiet enough to operate as a practical means of daily transportation. In 2016, the ride hailing company uber released a white paper describing its plans to begin offering an urban air mobility (UAM) service with the novel electric vtol i.e., evtol aircraft, and several manufacturers have since made public their plans of developing evtol aircraft to operate within such a system.to date, the mission requirements to which vtol aircraft for UAM missions should be sized have been relatively ILL-defined. Most of the discussion has focused on intra-city (i.e., within a single metropolitan area) trips, but inter-city (i.e., trips between geographically distinct metropolitan areas) travel has also been proposed. Uber has somewhat indirectly presented requirements for their proposed initial intra-city network in the dallas, TX area. This network requires vehicles to fly ranges of at most 55 statue miles and has an economic trip length of 24 miles. Analysis of the technology requirements for notional evtol vehicles to fly this network has been performed, but this analysis was limited to the dallas area and assumed fully electric aircraft.2 expansion of this type of analysis is desired to include other urban locations (with their associated density altitudes and trip ranges) as well as longer-range, inter-city trips, which may require hybrid-electric propulsion systems to provide sufficient range capabilities.