SBIR/STTR Award attributes
With the rise of concerns for sustainable vehicles there is an exponentially growing need for hybridization and electrification of VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) aircrafts - eVTOL. These advanced air mobility aircrafts present some significant advantages over traditional VTOL like helicopters and over airplanes in both military and civilian situations meant to dispatch resources or personnel, perform search and rescue missions, conduct medical evacuations or simply improve traffic effectiveness in highly populated city landscapes. However, designing their propulsion system is not as easy as making the trusted gas turbine engines that have typically been used. Indeed, battery technologies are constantly evolving with very few proven software to design them that are readily adapted to non-automotive applications. Moreover, a multi-level, multiphysics integrated approach offers significant benefits to designers (including to retrofit existing VTOL fleets) in terms of time savings (50+% reduction in design cycles), money savings, user-friendliness and data compatibility. With all of this in mind, our proposed solution is named “Implementation of BatPaC Battery Sizing Software in AxSTREAM® Platform for eVTOL System Level Simulation”. Its goal is to leverage the proven, non-defense software development capabilities of SoftInWay, Inc. (450+ customers since 2005) to provide DoD and commercial end-users with a user-friendly, dynamic, state-of-the-art program (BatPaC). This solver was created by Argonne National Laboratory for sizing of battery packs (including for use in eVTOL) and will be integrated to SoftInWay, Inc. software platform (AxSTREAM®) in order to provide system-level analysis of vehicle power generation, consumption and distribution for any aircraft mission profile. This technology transfer therefore allows expanding the AxSTREAM® software platform scope from working only with fossil fuels to being applicable to hybrid and electric propulsion and it allows commercialization of a state-of-the-art battery pack preliminary design tool from a reputable laboratory.
