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FEATURE GEARS & GEARBOXES TAKING TO THE AIR...
Magnetically geared motors look set to be an important solution for urban air mobility (UAM) vehicles, as David Latimer, CEO of Magnomatics, explains
F
or some, urban air mobility (UAM) is the stuff of Blade Runner-like science fiction, but the reality is getting much closer, with many of the major players planning to start operating by 2024. For example,
Joby Aviation, the California based company developing all-electric aircraft for aerial ridesharing, now considers it has sufficient cash (~US$1.6bn) to fund it to initial commercial operations. The company recently announced certification of its second pre-production prototype to accelerate certification. The aircraft has flown 154 miles on a single charge. Joby expects to start operations of its quiet, all electric aircraft with pilot and four passengers, in 2024 – creating possibly the first EVTOL airline. Wisk, meanwhile, which was born out of Google co-founder Larry Page’s Kitty Hawk and Boeing, plans for autonomous flight. The company has yet to announce a service date, but Boeing has recently re-affirmed its commitment to the programme, with additional funding of US$450m. The other lead player in the USA
is Archer Aviation, with a two seat autonomous aircraft completing its first hover in December 2021. Munich based Lilium, which listed on NASDAQ
in September 2021, is also working towards joint EASA and FAA certification of its seven seater aircraft, also by 2024. It recently moved its 5th generation aircraft to ATLAS in Spain to accelerate flight testing. And German rival Volocopter recently achieved the status of EASA Production Organisation Approval (POA), another step on the certification ladder. UK based Vertical Aerospace listed on the New
York Stock Exchange, raising US$300m, and claims this will be sufficient to take it through certification to serial production. Unlike most others, Vertical’s business model is to sell aircraft and the company claims conditional pre-orders of 1,350 aircraft from customers that include American Airlines, Virgin and Bristow. Volocopter and Vertical Aerospace both plan to launch their operations against the back-drop of the 2024 Paris Olympics. There are also many more programmes from the more traditional aerospace manufacturers, such a Embraer and Airbus. These new aircraft, however, bring with them many challenges.
CHALLENGES AND REQUIREMENTS The aircraft need to operate in complex airspace and over congested urban areas, which means
16 DESIGN SOLUTIONS FEBRUARY 2022
the need for reliability and redundancy is critical. There is also a strong driver for zero emissions
introduces the requirement for a mechanical gearbox, raising the issues of reliability, wear, maintenance and noise.
GEARED MOTORS NASA’s paper ‘Outer Stator Magnetically Gear Motors (OSMGM) for Electrified Urban Air Mobility Vehicles’ concluded that a magnetically geared motor was a highly effective solution to avoid the pitfalls of a mechanically gear high speed electric motor. Magnomatics, a spin-out from the
University of Sheffield in 2006, commercialises technology based on magnetic gears. Among its patented products is the Pseudo Direct Drive (PDD) which is an OSMGM. While being aware of work at NASA, Magnomatic’s early application priorities have been developing the technology
for offshore wind,
marine propulsion and light rail, building a demonstration direct drive 500kW
Joby’s wingless EVTOL UAM air taxi
and very low noise. One
common feature is that all these aircraft use multiple electric motors. This makes the performance density of the motors critical and a key to a performance breakthrough. NASA has been at the heart of UAM
development in the USA, and launched the UAM Grand Challenge back in August 2019 which resulted in partnerships with 17 companies to explore the requirement to develop UAM. This included cooperation with Joby, Boeing and Bell. The Grand Challenge was re-branded as Advanced air Mobility in March 2020 and NASA’s own research and development team has looked at promising electric motor technologies for UAM. The route to power density in electric machines has historically been to operate permanent magnet motors (PM) at higher speeds, often in excess of 10,000 rpm. To become useful for air mobility aircraft the high speeds need to be geared down by as much as seven times. Conventionally this
generator for offshore wind with a torque of 200,000Nm and efficiency in excess of 97%. The company has now managed to successfully
license its PDD technology in the above sectors to blue chip organisations and is now turning its attention to the UAM market, where there is a natural fit for the novel and patented technology. Magnomatics is currently designing
UAM propulsion motors based on its PDD technology and anticipates torque density in excess of 30Nm/kg, which will outperform all machines currently on the market. It is anticipated a first demonstration model will be available during the course of 2022.
Magnomatics
www.magnomatics.com
Magnomatics commercialises technology based on magnetic gears
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