High-fidelity aero-acoustic evaluations of a heavy-lift eVTOL in hover

Electric Vertical Take-off Landing (eVTOL) vehicles can transform aviation, but the unconventional aircraft development currently requires an extensive knowledge base. This paper presents a high-fidelity aerodynamic and acoustic evaluation of a heavy-lift multi-rotor eVTOL design in hover. The design, known as Skybus, has an MTOW of 14,000 kg, and six tiltable rotors attached at the tip of three sets of tandem wings with flaps. High-fidelity scale-adaptive CFD simulations of the full-scale Skybus vehicle in hover, with three design variations, were conducted using the HMB3 framework. The aerodynamic performance and interactions were analysed in detail. The baseline airframe caused a blockage force of about 13% of the MTOW, and the compact hovering rotors induced a sinusoidal single-blade loading variation, blended with small local interactions. The near-field acoustics were then directly extracted from the high-fidelity CFD results, and far-field acoustic propagation was computed using the acoustic analogy, following reference acoustic measurements for eVTOLs proposed by EASA. Different aerodynamic interactions and propeller acoustic characteristics showed strong impacts on the vehicle acoustics. The EPNL metric was also computed and analysed assuming various hover duration, and restrictions on maximum EPNL and hover duration are recommended for future rotorcraft hover noise certification. These novel results provide valuable guidance for eVTOL acoustic design, infrastructure planning, and policy-making.