Leamington Spa-based Drive System Design, an electrified propulsion engineering consultancy, is helping — via the AePOP project — to ‘determine future propulsion systems for electric aircraft in the UK’.

The objective of the project, which is funded by the ‘Driving the Electric Revolution Challenge’ at UK Research and Innovation, has been to ‘develop a toolchain that brings critical performance development into the very earliest stages of electrified propulsion system design in aerospace’.

AePOP evaluates the trade-offs between vehicle range, mass and cost by simulating thousands of detailed propulsion system candidates to enable significant design optimisation at the architecture selection stage of a project.

The ‘toolchain’ can be applied to single vehicles or used to determine the most cost-effective family of propulsion systems for a range of vehicle types. As a result, it reduces development timescales and accelerates the certification process.

The initial study has been aimed at small eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) vehicles with a payload of 150-400kg, although the optimisation process can also be applied to autonomous drones as well as regional and sub-regional aircraft.

John Morton, Drive System Design’s engineering director, said: “The eVTOL industry is fast-growing globally and there is an opportunity for the UK to become a leading centre of expertise.

“The demand for non-contact deliveries is growing, including the delivery of medical supplies — catalysed by the Covid-19 crisis — and eVTOLs could be a significant part of the future solution. They offer the opportunity to reduce traffic on our roads, improve our air quality and potentially reduce delivery costs.”

The project has adapted and is using Drive System Design’s electrified powertrain optimisation process (ePOP), a bespoke simulation tool that has been proven and rigorously tested on automotive applications and is now being used for aerospace propulsion systems. The initial study is investigating its potential to create a highly optimised, modular, scalable propulsion system to suit most fan-driven eVTOL vehicles.

Drive System Design aims to make its progress on the aerospace application available to the wider industry in due course; AePOP is also being used in the InCEPTion (integrated flight control, energy storage and propulsion technologies for electric aircraft) ATI (Aerospace Technology Institute) project, which started in January 2021.