NASA Crash Tests eVTOL Concept

NASA researchers recently completed a full-scale crash test of an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) concept vehicle at the Landing and Impact Research (LandIR) facility at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

The eVTOL was a ‘Lift+Cruise’ test article developed by the Revolutionary Vertical Left Technology (RVLT) project in another effort for NASA to advance research for the Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) mission.

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NASA’s vision for AAM is to help emerging aviation markets safely develop an air transportation system that moves people and cargo between places previously not served or underserved by aviation. Understanding how these future aircraft may act in a crash scenario is another key point of research. Hoisted into the air, then released with pyrotechnic cutters, the model swung forward and down back to the Earth with a loud crash.

A variety of experiments were included on the test article. These experiments included several seat configurations including a NASA energy absorbing concept, various sizes of crash test dummies to study the effects of the crash loads on all sizes of occupants, and a modular NASA-developed energy-absorbing composite subfloor.

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The first event was the floor crushing and seat stroking. The subfloor and energy absorbing seats functioned as intended and limited the effect of the impact on the crash test dummies. The second was the collapse of the overhead structure. The effect of the overhead structure collapse on the crash test dummies is still being determined.

For this test, an overhead-mass was designed to represent the wing structure, rotor and battery. The decision was made to assume that all the weight of the overhead structure was over the cabin. There are many other overhead-mass configurations which may behave differently in a crash.

More #eVTOL crash test footage! This was from recent testing at @NASA_Langley. Details: https://t.co/LydMHhxaYr

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The test data will be used to refine modeling techniques and reported to the AAM community so that it can be discussed.  The full-scale testing data will be used to improve the simulation models such that in the future, the predictions will be more realistic. The data will further be used as the basis for evaluating potential test conditions and configurations that will be used during a drop test of a second Lift+Cruise test article, tentatively scheduled for testing in late 2023.