Receives FAA Safety Research Grant To Design Testing Procedures for Certification

The Department of Aerospace Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has added some more prestige to the institution as a hub of aviation safety research with an FAA grant to study elements of the eVTOL revolution to come. The study is funded by $625,000 to "enhance the safety of a new class of electric propulsion-powered aircraft." 

The research will aim to establish safe guidelines and pathways to certification, as well as the ways that their drivetrains differ from traditional aircraft. It is easy to take the wide knowledge base of stock, fuel based aircraft for granted - they are well understood in their failure modes, needs, and issues even in emergencies. The instant-on, high-output motors involved in many multirotor aircraft bring entirely different flight dynamics to the table, necessitating a new set of standards to adequately measure their safety. Somewhat like earlier revolutions in aircraft design, a number of competing systems, styles, and layout have all coincided to create a wide variety of flight dynamics. Doctor Pat Anderson, Aerospace Engineering professor and director of the Eagle Flight Research Center and co-principal investigator on the project has been working on the theme for a decade. In 2011, his center's EcoEagle flew as the first manned hybrid battery aircraft in the NASA Green Flight Challenge.

“At the Eagle Flight Research Center, we are well suited to create theoretical models but also to build experimental hardware to validate those models,” said Doctor Kyle Collins. The center has devised a testbed of a quadcopter using avionics to test different control strategies and aircraft behavior, hoping to write the book on what's best in emergency situations. “The difficult part of the adoption of a new type of aircraft propulsion is the safety aspect. We need to ensure that these new classes of aircraft have the same level of safety that we have all come to expect from commercial air travel," said Anderson.

“At the Eagle Flight Research Center, we are well suited to create theoretical models but also to build experimental hardware to validate those models,” Collins said.

FMI: www.erau.edu, https://daytonabeach.erau.edu/about/labs/eagle-flight-research