eVTOL Modeling Frameworks: A Comparative Study

For the last few decades, Canada's National Research Council (NRC) has been at the forefront in analyzing dynamic systems and developing tools to construct aircraft models based on flight test data. With a fixed and rotary-wing aircraft fleet available, NRC has the capability to perform leading edge R&D System Identification (SI); this worldleading SI technology has been developed and has assisted industry partners, Department of National Defense (DND), and various universities in aircraft simulation and development. As a result, NRC has gained extensive experience in modeling aircraft using SI techniques. In collaboration with CAE, this paper demonstrates the acceleration of the NRC's current flight modeling techniques, highlighting recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). A new Bayesian ML software is being developed to identify a 6 degrees of freedom (6-DoF) quasisteady model using simulated flight test data. To achieve this, data from the CAE Sample electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) simulation platform vehicle during hover maneuvers is utilized. Additionally, this paper presents results on extending the model to include rotor dynamics using the classical SI approach for comparison purposes. In summary, all methods provide a high-fidelity model; with the higher model structure, the vertical acceleration match was noticeably better.