Energy-Efficient Arrival with RTA Constraint for Multirotor eVTOL in Urban Air Mobility

What is it about?

The electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft can alleviate transportation congestion on the ground by utilizing three-dimensional airspace efficiently. However, the endurance of Lithium-ion Polymer (Li-Po) batteries imposes critical constraints on the opera- tional time span of an eVTOL aircraft on urban air mobility (UAM) passenger transportation mission. This research focuses on the formulation of fixed final time multiphase optimal control problem with energy consumption as the performance index for a multirotor eVTOL aircraft. The proposed multiphase optimal control problem formulation and the numerical solution enables a multirotor eVTOL aircraft to meet the assigned required time of arrival (RTA) and achieve an energy efficient arrival trajectory for a given concept of operation (CONOP), which is a critical enabler for the safe and efficient future eVTOL operations for passenger transportation and cargo delivery. The problem formulation is applied to a UAM passenger transportation use case with EHang 184 eVTOL aircraft, and an Uber proposed vertiport for five different types of CONOPs. Finally, the energy consumed for all the CONOPs is compared to propose the most energy efficient CONOP for a multirotor eVTOL on UAM passenger trans- portation mission. The proposed framework can also be used to address an energy efficient cargo delivery application in a UAS traffic management (UTM) context.

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