High-Fidelity Analysis of Six-Passenger Quadrotor Air Taxi Concept

Abstract:
A code-to-code comparison has been performed for high-fidelity simulations of NASA's six-passenger quadrotor air taxi concept vehicle. The multidisciplinary simulations combine comprehensive rotorcraft dynamics with high-fidelity fluid dynamics obtained from an unsteady Navier-Stokes computational fluid dynamics code. An internal overset-grid assembler, Yoga, developed at the NASA Langley Research Center, is employed to efficiently handle the communications between component grids particularly for the present large-scale, unstructured-grid systems. The simulation results are then compared with those in the literature. A quantitative comparison of converged trim angles has been performed and normal force, chord force, and pitching moment coefficients are presented for qualitative comparison. Workflow changes to meet the unique demands of multirotor vehicle analysis are also discussed.

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