Public Research Seminar by Sustainable Energy and Environment Thrust, HKUST(GZ) - Empowering Complex Low-Altitude Scenarios: Key Technologies for Aerodynamic and Noise Design of eVTOL Rotors

As a national strategic emerging industry, the low-altitude economy takes low-altitude airspace resources as its core element. Through the deep coordination of manufacturing, support, service and other links, it has established a comprehensive economic form covering multiple scenarios such as logistics transportation, urban transportation, and emergency rescue. The low-altitude economy features a long industrial chain and a wide radiation range, and holds important strategic significance in stimulating investment, promoting innovation, etc.

As an important part of the low-altitude economy, electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft face the practical challenge of having to simultaneously optimize aerodynamic performance and noise in complex scenarios. In terms of aerodynamic performance, when comparing the mainstream configurations of existing eVTOL aircraft: the helicopter configuration has high hovering efficiency but low forward flight efficiency; the compound configuration has higher forward flight efficiency than the helicopter configuration during the transition state, yet it suffers from complex aerodynamic interference; the tiltrotor configuration (semi-tilt/fully-tilt) overcomes the shortcomings of the previous two by achieving seamless conversion of flight modes through rotor vector transformation, but it gives rise to the coupling problem that the rotor design needs to balance both hovering and cruising states. There is an inherent design contradiction between the high disc loading conditions required for vertical takeoff and landing and the low disc loading in cruising flight. In terms of noise, since the current main application scenarios of eVTOL aircraft are short-distance shuttles in urban areas, the urban operating environment poses strict requirements for the control of rotor aerodynamic noise. Therefore, the design of eVTOL rotors needs to balance aerodynamic performance and noise requirements across various flight states.

In view of this, systematically analyzing the key technical challenges in the aerodynamic performance and noise design of eVTOL rotors, and clarifying the development path for enhancing the comprehensive effectiveness of rotor systems of the eVTOLs in complex low-altitude scenarios, is of great practical and strategic significance for promoting the high-quality development of the low-altitude economy industry.