Abstract:
Urban Air Mobility (UAM) aircraft are highly susceptible to turbulent wind disturbances when operating near buildings in complex urban environments. Microscale wind phenomena, combined with the unconventional designs of UAM aircraft, increase the risk of performance deviation, the overall duration, and the cost of flight tests for certification. A way to overcome this would be through simulation-based flight tests. Therefore, this study simulates a UAM aircraft landing vertically behind an isolated tall building, considering four different wind scenarios: no wind, uniform wind fields at low and high spatial resolutions (assumed constant across the airframe), and non-uniform fields with spatially varying velocity profiles at individual rotor hubs. The resultant flight test data are then used to quantify the impact of microscale wind characteristics on landing performance by systematically analyzing the rotor performance, aerodynamics, control response, and trajectory deviation.