A Framework for eVTOL Performance Evaluation in Urban Air Mobility Realm

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive simulation framework integrating UTM and realistic eVTOL models to evaluate eVTOL performance within urban air mobility scenarios, enabling more accurate testing and analysis.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel simulation platform combining UTM and detailed eVTOL modeling, bridging the gap between traffic management and vehicle performance evaluation.

Findings

Enhanced UTM simulator for UAM environments

Realistic eVTOL performance assessment using SUAVE

Insights into eVTOL behavior in urban air mobility

Abstract

In this paper, we developed a generalized simulation framework for the evaluation of electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles (eVTOLs) in the context of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) and under the concept of Urban Air Mobility (UAM). Unlike most existing studies, the proposed framework combines the utilization of UTM and eVTOLs to develop a realistic UAM testing platform. For this purpose, we first enhanced an existing UTM simulator to simulate the real-world UAM environment. Then, instead of using a simplified eVOTL model, a realistic eVTOL design tool, namely SUAVE, is employed and an dilation sub-module is introduced to bridge the gap between the UTM simulator and SUAVE eVTOL performance evaluation tool to elaborate the complete mission profile. Based on the developed simulation framework, experiments are conducted and the results are presented to analyze the performance of eVTOLs in the UAM environment.