Simulation Studies for an Urban Air Mobility Aircraft using Hardware-In-Loop Experiments

Urban Air Mobility seeks to transport passengers, deliver cargo, and provide emergency
transportation in major metropolitan areas. This will be accomplished with distributed electric-powered vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. The low specific energy of the current generation
lithium-ion battery packs limit the operational range of electric aircraft. Limited range impacts
safety by reducing the time available for analyzing and responding to errors and failures, and
limiting the ability to fly to an alternative landing area or return to base. It is therefore critical to
understand flight operational and environmental conditions that impact the onboard lithium-ion
polymer battery pack’s health. With this as the motivation, experimental procedure in
a laboratory setting, and results of the experiments performed on battery packs subject to
power draw corresponding to power required during the different phases of flight of a NASA
conceptual quadrotor aircraft in simulation are described. The fully charged battery is allowed
to discharge at specific C-rates based on the power draw profile and the current and voltages
are recorded. Observed results under different operating conditions and mission profiles are
discussed.