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Advanced Vertical Flight Laboratory

AVFL

Texas A&M University College of Engineering

Welcome

Posted on 2020-04-27 by Farid Saemi

  • AVFL Overview

The Advanced Vertical Flight Laboratory (AVFL) is a facility in the Aerospace Engineering Department of Texas A&M University that conducts inter-disciplinary fundamental research in the following broad areas:

Research interests

  • Next generation vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) concepts
  • Unmanned underwater and amphibious vehicle concepts.
  • High efficiency vertical axis wind and tidal turbines
  • Novel aircraft concepts for planetary exploration
  • Active space debris removal concepts
  • Energy efficient green aviation
  • Autonomy for VTOL aircraft
  • Electric VTOL powertrain
  • Bio-inspired flight
  • Quiet rotors

Filed Under: Uncategorized

AVFL sweeps 2021 VFS scholarships

Posted on 2021-03-31 by Farid Saemi

Vertical Flight Society (VFS) logo.

AVFL students have won scholarships in every category of the 2021 Vertical Flight Foundation (VFF) Scholarship program.

  1. Joseph Heimerl (BS): Michael J. Rutkowski Scholarship, honoring the NASA/US Army aeromechanics engineer and leader.
  2. Melanie Peavy (BS): Tom Wood Honorary Scholarship, which recognizes more than 50 years of technical contributions to Bell by Mr. Wood.
  3. Hunter Denton (MS): Barry J. Baskett Scholarship, honoring the memory of a career US Army engineer who led Aviation Engineering, and later managed the Aviation Technology Base Program.
  4. Farid Saemi (PhD, 2 time winner): Dr. John Zuk Scholarship, honoring the NASA engineer who was a champion of civil tiltrotor technology and applications.

This is the third year in a row that AVFL students have won all categories of the VFF scholarships and the seventh year in a row that they have won scholarships at large.

Past winners include: Bochan Lee (2x), David Coleman (2x), Joel White, Atanu Halder, James McElreath, Kanika Gakhar, Adam Kellen, and Brett Himmelberg.

Full press release: link

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: award, scholarship, vff, vfs

AVFL students win best paper awards

Posted on 2021-02-04 by Farid Saemi

Hunter Denton and Farid Saemi

Hunter Denton and Farid Saemi’s research has the potential to increase the performance and operation of unmanned aerial systems. | Image: Courtesy of Hunter Denton and Farid Saemi

Hunter Denton and Farid Saemi, graduate students in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University, each won a best paper award at the Vertical Flight Society’s 2020 annual forum for their unmanned aerial system (UAS) research. The Vertical Flight Society’s annual forum is the preeminent conference for vertical flight technology.

Denton’s paper, “Design, Development and Flight Testing of a Gun-Launched Rotary-Wing Micro Air Vehicle,” tied for the best paper award in the Advanced Vertical Flight session. This is the second time in a row that Denton has won this award. Denton’s research to launch small in-flight reconfigurable hover-capable UAS with grenade-or mortar-launch systems has the potential to significantly increase the range of operation of these systems since the vehicles do not have to expend as much energy flying to a designated area.

Saemi’s paper, “Development of a Brushless DC Motor Sizing Algorithm for a Small UAS Design Framework,” won the best paper award in the Propulsion session. Saemi’s research to optimize the electric motor, battery and power electronics of UAS also has the potential to significantly increase the performance of these systems since their electrical components are often selected from rules of thumb rather than physics-based calculations.

Aerospace engineering associate professor Dr. Moble Benedict advises both students in the Advanced Vertical Flight Laboratory. In past years, Denton and Saemi have each earned the U.S. Army Research Laboratory’s prestigious Journeyman Fellowship for their graduate studies. Both students are currently working toward their doctoral degrees.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: award, best paper, vfs

Lab startup wins Air Force contract for quiet rotor technology

Posted on 2021-02-01 by Farid Saemi

Harmony Aeronautics team standing beside their invention.

Harmony Aeronautics has won a contract from the Air Force’s Agility Prime Program to further develop and commercialize their quiet rotor technology. | Image: Texas A&M Engineering

Harmony Aeronautics, a company started by members of the Texas A&M University Department of Aerospace Engineering, has recently won a Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) contract from the Air Force’s Agility Prime program to further develop and commercialize their quiet rotor technology for vertical flight capable Urban Air Mobility aircraft. The contract is worth $150,000 and enables the company to seek up to $2-3 million in total funding over the next three years.

Harmony Aeronautics was co-founded by Dr. Moble Benedict and his graduate students, David Coleman, Farid Saemi, Atanu Halder, Hunter Denton, Carl Runco and Bochan Lee at the Advanced Vertical Flight Laboratory, as well as two external collaborators. Benedict first started this team to compete in Boeing’s GoFly Prize in spring 2018. This global design challenge sought to encourage development of a “personal flying device” that could quietly fly a single person for at least 30 minutes. The Aggie team’s design was one of ten winners in the contest’s “design” stage, one of five winners in the contest’s “build” stage and the sole team to demonstrate quiet flight in the contest’s “fly-off” stage.

The Air Force kicked off its Agility Prime campaign to fund, support and test novel electric vertical flight technologies soon after the team competed in the GoFly contest. The team successfully submitted an STTR proposal to Agility Prime with help from the Office of Commercialization and Entrepreneurship at the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES). The contract provides $150,000 and 6 months to further research the feasibility of the proposed idea. Next, Harmony Aeronautics can apply for $750,000 and 15 months to demonstrate a prototype. After this, the startup can work with the Air Force and private partners to further field-test a product and develop a formal production line.

“The TEES Commercialization & Entrepreneurship team is fully committed to working with Harmony Aeronautics as it makes progress towards the next stages of commercialization,” said Dr. Saurabh Biswas, TEES executive director for commercialization and entrepreneurship. “Harmony is a TEES Commercialization & Entrepreneurship portfolio company, and its successful outcome in Phase I provides a great foundation to build the next generation of products to serve both defense and civilian markets with their quiet rotor technology platform.”

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: GoFly, Harmony Aeronautics, spinoff

Texas A&M team competes in final phase of GoFly Challenge

Posted on 2020-12-21 by Farid Saemi

A prototype of a personal flying vehicle

The personal flying vehicle can be no larger than 8.5 feet and capable of carrying a payload of 200 pounds. | Image: Courtesy of Dr. Moble Benedict

Over the past two years, a Texas A&M University team in the Department of Aerospace Engineering has been working to make personal flying vehicles a reality as part of the GoFly Prize competition sponsored by Boeing.

The GoFly Prize, a two-year, $2-million international competition to create a personal flying device, launched in September 2017 and had almost 3,000 innovators across 110 countries competing in Phase I. The challenge was to create a device that can be flown by anyone, regardless of experience, 20 miles without refueling or recharging with vertical, or near vertical, takeoff and landing capability.

Under Dr. Moble Benedict, associate professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, a team of eight Texas A&M aerospace engineering graduate students and two researchers from NASA created “Harmony.” As outlined in their written report, Harmony is a compact rotorcraft designed to minimize noise and maximize efficiency, safety, reliability and flight experience. As part of Phase I, the team built a 1/8 scale prototype to demonstrate their vehicle design. They were awarded $20,000 as one of the 10 winning teams in Phase I and went on to build a prototype, named Aria, to win the $50,000 prize for Phase II. The Texas A&M team was the only United States university team out of the five Phase II winners.

“Winning both Phases I and II of the GoFly Prize, especially with such fierce competition, brought a lot of excitement and confidence to the team,” said Benedict.

Five engineers stand smiling next to their prototype of a personal flying vehicle.

From left to right: Farid Saemi, Hunter Denton, Carl Runco, David Coleman, Moble Benedict | Image: Courtesy of Dr. Moble Benedict

Phase II involved hundreds of hours of lab testing to successfully verify their full-scale aerodynamic and acoustic predictions. Despite the countless hours the team has put in to developing Aria, they have never lost their positive energy or focus on the end goal.

“Although the hours have been long and exhausting, I’m very excited about GoFly,” said team member Farid Saemi. “I would not have enjoyed such a hands-on opportunity to develop a new field of aviation even if I had gone straight to industry as a recent graduate.”

Throughout the process, the team worked to address practical issues that needed to be overcome, including the size of the personal flying vehicle and the high noise levels generated. The vehicle has to be less than 8.5 feet – something that can fit in a garage like a car and take off almost vertically.

“Helicopter rotors are very big because of the trade-off between efficiency vs. compactness of a rotor,” said Benedict. “We have carefully chosen a configuration that can give you very high efficiency for the given footprint.”

To address the noise, the team shaped the blades to minimize the rotor noise as much as possible. At 73 decibels 50 feet in the air (the equivalent of highway noise in a car), Aria was also the quietest prototype at the competition and is also believed to be the quietest rotorcraft in the world at this size scale.

The final personal flying vehicle can be no larger than 8.5 feet, capable of carrying a payload of 200 pounds and must travel at a speed of at least 30 knots. Because the team’s vehicle crashed during a flight test 10 days prior to competition, they were only able to fly their one-third scale prototype for Phase III in February 2020. However, Harmony was one of the four teams that could fly at any scale during the final fly-off. Since none of the competing teams could meet the GoFly requirements in the final fly off, the competition still remains open. Benedict and his team at Texas A&M intend to continue competing for the $1 million grand prize provided they can obtain university support to build the next prototype. Based on the new GoFly rules (to account for COVID-19), Harmony could even demonstrate the flight capabilities of their new prototype at the RELLIS Campus and win the grand prize.

Benedict is confident that had the team flown the full-scale model, they would have won the competition; he intends to compete in the next GoFly phase with a stronger and more innovative prototype. They’re currently analyzing what they’ve learned from the GoFly competition to improve their design in the next competition. Since their Phase II success, the team has also built and successfully tested both the one-third scale prototype (at 22 pounds and the full-scale prototype (at 550 pounds).

Benedict said, “The visibility and success the team has had from the GoFly challenge has put Texas A&M on the map for eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) aviation. This also paved the way for two research grants we recently obtained, one from the Army Research Lab on hybrid-electric aviation the other from Air Force’s Agility Prime Program to develop quiet propulsors for eVTOL aircraft.”

The team is also grateful for the financial and commercialization support from Brad Worsham ’88, associate professor of practice in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station Office of Commercialization and Entrepreneurship and Ray Rothrock ’77.

Texas A&M team members include David Coleman, Farid Saemi, Carl Runco, Atanu Halder, Bochan Lee, Hunter Denton, Vishaal Subramanian and Benedict. More information on Benedict’s research can be found at his website.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Boeing, GoFly, Harmony Aeronautics

AVFL sweeps 2020 VFS scholarships

Posted on 2020-04-24 by Farid Saemi

AVFL students have won scholarships in every category of the 2020 Vertical Flight Foundation (VFF) Scholarship program.

  1. Grant Erickson (BS): Geoff Byham Scholarship, honoring an architect of advanced rotor aerodynamics at Westland Helicopters, Yeovil, England (now Leonardo Helicopters)
  2. Grant McCurdy (BS): Bob Lynn Scholarship, which honors the memory of the former Bell Helicopter executive and VFS leader par excellence
  3. Farid Saemi (MS): Tom Wood Honorary Scholarship, which recognizes more than 50 years of technical contributions to Bell Helicopter by Mr. Wood
  4. Bochan Lee: (PhD, 2-time recipient): Barry J. Baskett Scholarship, honoring the memory of a career US Army engineer who led Aviation Engineering, and later managed the Aviation Technology Base Program

This is the sixth year in a row that AVFL students have won scholarships sponsored by the global Vertical Flight Society (VFS).

Past winners include: David Coleman (2x), Joel White, Atanu Halder, James McElreath, Kanika Gakhar, Adam Kellen, and Brett Himmelberg.

Full press release: link

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: scholarships, vff, vfs

Contact

Director
Dr. Moble Benedict
CV (.pdf)

741C HR Bright Bldg
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843

Ph: 979-458-2705
benedict@tamu.edu

 

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