Pretest Comprehensive Analysis for the Urban Air Mobility Side-by-Side Test Stand

The Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Side-by-Side Test Stand (SBS) is a two-rotor test stand designed and built at NASA Ames Research Center under the Revolutionary Vertical Lift Technology (RVLT) Project. The SBS entered service in the wind tunnel in the latter part of 2021 and allows for the experimental analysis of rotor-rotor interactions for UAM vehicles of the side-by-side variety. The SBS will allow investigation of the effect of numerous variables such as rotor lateral separation, rotor collective pitch, model pitch angle (𝛼), rotor rotation direction, and flight speed. This paper presents performance predictions for the SBS. These predictions, which were generated using CAMRAD II, provided increased assurance of the safe operational limits of the system. Additionally, these results, when compared with future data, will be used for validation of the computational models.