Aurora Swiss Aerospace, a subsidiary of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and aviation technologies developer Aurora Flight Sciences, has provided professors at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) School of Engineering, with flight testing services involving the SKIRON-X aircraft.
The collaboration aimed to validate the ZHAW vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) digital twin model and streamline the development of eVTOL aircraft. The data required to achieve this was collected using Aurora’s Skiron Expeditionary sUAS (SKIRON-X), an electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.
SKIRON-X
SKIRON-X incorporates the user-friendly operation of an eVTOL configuration with the longer range and endurance of a fixed-wing design.
The SKIRON-X can be used for various tasks including research and development, firefighting, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions, and communications relay.
The Flight Test
ZHAW and Aurora jointly defined flight test conditions, maneuvers, and test points in every flight condition.
Aurora engineers outfitted a SKIRON-X aircraft with accelerometers and strain gauges on the aircraft’s wings, fuselage, and booms to provide comprehensive data on the vehicle’s accelerations and wing deformations.
Aurora executed two days of flight testing, providing calibrated data that fueled ZHAW’s exploration into the structural intricacies of the virtual model.
The collaboration covered everything from the requirements and instrumentation definition, to flight test.
Aurora’s collaboration with ZHAW was led by Angelo Esposito, structures engineer at Aurora Swiss Aerospace, who said; “We are proud to work with ZHAW as they discover new ways to advance the future of flight. The university is dedicated to assessing digital solutions in eVTOL development and their impact on the certification approach.”
Model-SI
ZHAW plans to present its results to the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) later this year. The project, titled Model-SI, is funded under the European Union’s Horizon Europe program.
As part of the program, ZHAW will assess the impact of digital twin multiphysics modeling techniques applied to eVTOL aircraft and the potential savings in flight testing cost during certification. Aurora is providing flight test data that will help the ZHAW team assess the accuracy of its digital model. ZHAW aims to better model the peculiar aerodynamics phenomena and structural dynamic response that are posing new challenges in the development of eVTOL aircraft configurations.
Aurora Swiss first joined forces with ZHAW in September 2023, aiming to explore the challenges of advanced modeling and simulation for complex aircraft development, certification, and continued airworthiness.
