Applying an Interior VR Co-Design Approach for the Medical Deployment Vehicle of the Future

Designing the cabin of future rescue helicopter concepts is characterized by a high level of complexity. Besides the technical and mission-specific requirements of the helicopter system, new cabin designs must particularly meet the individual requirements to provide a high level of functionality and usability for all user groups. In addition, the prototyping, planning and execution of user tests is enormously time-consuming and costly, which increases the complexity of the development process. The implementation of a user-centered design approach in conjunction with an optimized prototyping and feedback process can provide an effective solution in this context. Therefore, this paper aims to present the applied Co-Design process for the design of a novel rescue helicopter cabin using an immersive prototyping and feedback process. As part of this approach, the focus is on conducting and evaluating user workshops with a particular emphasis on medical crew and pilots with experience in air rescue. The first phase of each workshop initially involves exchanging experiences, challenges, and problem scenarios from daily operations through a discussion among participants. The second workshop phase involves brainstorming and idea exchange for a novel concept using a digital concept board and notes. With the help of a moderator, these ideas are then transferred to the virtual reality mockup using the Gravity Sketch tool and reevaluated and optimized by participants in real-time. This approach provides a significant contribution to the development of a future emergency medical deployment vehicle concept for the DLR project Chaser in course of the DLR guiding concept 4 “Rescue Helicopter 2030”. Moreover, the combination between the Co-Design process and the immersive prototyping and optimization approach in virtual reality offers new and effective opportunities for a more efficient and user-centered cabin design. Additionally, this approach can be applied to the design of further and future cabin concepts, making them more tangible and evaluable for end-users

Concept Study of a fast VTOL-UAV Technology-Demonstrator for MUM-T

The Manned Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T) of rotorcraft offers the potential to increase the effectivity and survivability of the combined tactical unit. Currently, commercially available Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) capability are not specifically designed for fast forward flight and would slow down the entire tactical unit. This study presents the first results of the development of a technology-demonstrator with a maximum airspeed of at least 180 kt. The investigation of different VTOL-UAV concepts, the selection of a thrust-compound configuration and the first details of the predesign are described. Furthermore, the flight performance is analyzed with focus on maximum airspeed, power, endurance and range. The results show, that the proposed design of the VTOL-UAV is expected to fulfill the requirements

Urban Air Mobility Use Cases and Technology Scenarios for the HorizonUAM Project

Increasing urbanization and a growing need for mobility are pushing the transport infrastructure in many cities to its limits. Many different mobility solutions are being investigated to solve this problem. In addition to ground-based transportation, Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is discussed as a possible solution to create a new type of urban transport mode, which could fulfill different transport needs in several application fields. The cross-institutional and interdisciplinary research project "HorizonUAM - Urban Air Mobility Research at the German Aerospace Center (DLR)" brings together a wide variety of DLR departments to research on the vision of Urban Air Mobility. In order to coordinate the different research focuses of the project partners, it is necessary to create a common basis for the upcoming work. Therefore, five different use cases were defined. All use cases are selected in order to cover a broad spectrum of challenges for vehicles, safety, air traffic management, infrastructure and operations. In addition, different types of ground-based infrastructure (vertidromes) and their characteristic properties as well as two different concepts of operation (ConOps) for an on-demand and a scheduled UAM service are considered. For each use case and based on the ConOps, application-specific mission profiles, which form the basis for the design of the vehicles, are outlined. As the future of UAM also strongly depends on technological advances, a short-term (2025+) and a long-term (2050+) scenario capture the development of the most important fields of technology for UAM until 2050. Based on the defined use cases, missions and technology scenarios, various aspects regarding to technical feasibility, efficiency, sustainability, market development potential and social acceptance will be investigated in the course of the project

Structural Analysis of a Rotorcraft Fuselage in a Multidisciplinary Environment

The helicopter constitutes a very important branch of the aeronautical industry despite being expensive, tricky to operate and requiring a high maintenance effort. Its ability to hover and operate under low airspeed, combined with the ability to land in almost every spot makes helicopters superior to fixed wing aircraft in certain missions. Moreover, helicopters also compete with earth bound vehicles when it comes to operations in sparsely populated areas or when the infrastructure impedes the use of automobiles. Therefore, the field of application for helicopters is wide ranging from aerial observation over general transport of passengers and cargo up to medical transport of severely injured patients. Recently, interest has grown to improve typical limitations of rotorcraft, such as to reduce noise and to extend the flight envelope by increasing cruise velocity. Novel and more effective helicopter designs might work in a wider operating range and/or could transport more payload in terms of mass and volume, for instance enhanced medical equipment allowing a better and faster treatment of the patient. These objectives lead to unconventional design concepts, e.g. compound helicopters that feature additional lifting surfaces and propellers. To date the statistical knowledge of such configurations that could be beneficial during early design phases is limited. However, the rotorcraft design process is very challenging since it is mainly driven by the desired functionality. Accordingly, helicopter fuselages often feature cut-outs that influence the load path and hence the structure and mass. In turn, a sufficiently precise estimation of the helicopter total mass is required for a feasible performance analysis, thus calling for an iterative design process. With the aim to create and evaluate traditional but also new unconventional rotorcraft concepts, an integrated, automated multidisciplinary process chain covering the conceptual and preliminary design stages has been established within the German Aerospace Center (DLR). It allows the design of virtual rotorcraft configurations starting from scratch, based on few minimum input parameters, e.g. mission range, cruise velocity, payload, blade number and rotor configuration. This process chain features a modular approach to allow for high flexibility concerning the redefinition of certain parameters that become available during the design process. The presented paper describes the process chain and the common data format used to combine the different tools. Particular attention is turned on the analysis of the fuselage structure. Exemplary, the generation of a generic rotorcraft is shown gradually from the very beginning by evaluating the required input parameters up to the structural analysis of the fuselage

Numerische Untersuchungen einer Adaptiven Wand am Transsonischen Windkanal Göttingen

The subject of this investigation is a simulation of the adaptive wall section of the transonic wind tunnel in Gottingen by computational fluid dynamics. A method for wall adaption of closed tunnel sections for 2D-measurements by Amecke is applied. This investigation uses an existing process chain in the numerical environment of the DLR TAU-code. The measurement series which was examined was taken in the Transonic Wind Tunnel Gottingen at Mach numbers between 0.75 and 0.85. In the process the wall boundary layer of the empty tunnel as well as the pressure distribution of a NACA0010 airfoil had been investigated. The wall adaption method is used iteratively. The results of the simulations at transonic speeds give information about the convergence behavior of the wall adaption which is based on the potential theory. It was observed, that at Mach numbers higher than 0.75 a greater number of adaption steps is required in order to minimize the interference. The measured and calculated pressure distributions show a very good agreement. Fluid phenomena at Mach numbers of 0.85 require the use of a diffusor which was not implemented for the fully subsonic computations. Further investigations show influences due to a gap between the sidewall and the airfoil on the pressure distribution and the adaption. The possibility to perform a numerical simulation of a static experiment in the Transonic Wind Tunnel by taking into account the full geometry of the measuring section could be proven for this procedure

A multi-disciplinary toolbox for rotorcraft design

The purpose of this paper is to outline the structure of the DLR integrated rotorcraft design process. The complexity of rotorcraft design requires the development of the tools directly by the specialists of the respective institutes, where the tools are continuously refined and published to authorised users. The integration of the tools into a suitable software Framework by means of distributed computation and the harmonisation of the tools among each other are presented. This framework delivers a high level of modularity making the layout and testing of the process very flexible. This design environment covers the conceptual and preliminary design phases. Not only conventional main/tail rotor configurations can be designed, but also some other configurations with more than one main rotor. The fundamental concept behind the layout of the tools is demonstrated, especially the use of scaling and optimisation loops in connection with the different levels of fidelity and the different phases of design

Sizing and Optimization of Fixed Pitch RPM-Controlled Rotors At Multiple Design Points For Passenger-Grade Multirotor Configurations

This work summarizes the aspects of initial sizing of rpm-controlled rotors for multirotor eVTOL configurations. For the showcase, an isolated rotor with a simple recangular planform is sized with respect to peformance requirements in hover and in forward flight. The blade chord and twist is swept within a parameter range to find the minimum power required. Results show the correlation between the design parameters and the rotor performance for various disc and blade loadings, given constant rotor thrust and blade number