Integrated Vehicle-Propulsion-Control Design for DEP-Enabled Aircraft (IDEA)

NASA is spearheading the efforts on Urban Air Mobility (UAM) and providing impetus to the industry to follow with concepts for the same. Several manufacturers, as well as, NASA, have come up with concepts for UAM aircraft; mostly using Distributed Electric Propulsion (DEP). However, the multidisciplinary interactions involved and the ability to utilize the distributed propulsors for improved control are not fully understood. To achieve this and use such capabilities in design, we are developing IDEA, a design optimization architecture that includes multidisciplinary multi-fidelity analyses for integrated airframe-DEP design. This technology, if successful, can push the state of the art in UAM aircraft concept design and DEP enabled aircraft in general.