Student Name: Sheldon Salins

Advisor: Dr. Marilyn Smith

Milestone: PhD Thesis Proposal

Degree Program: Aerospace Engineering

Title: Reduced-Order Modeling for Aero-Structural Design of Advanced Air Mobility Vehicles

Abstract: In recent years, the field of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM)---previously referred to as Urban Air Mobility (UAM)---has made significant progress towards commercialization. These AAM vehicles have consumer-facing applications such as air taxi and Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle (UAV) delivery services, with many proposed missions occurring within urban settings. This is an environment characterized by aerodynamic drivers that are not present in the traditional flight analysis methods applied in open-air conditions, such as the importance of building wake flows and small-scale turbulence. The AAM industry is also presently facing the challenging economics of bringing financially stable low capacity flights to the market, meaning minimizing costs while maximizing safety are a large concern. With this in mind, a deeper understanding of sources of structural fatigue and their significance may be crucial to keeping inspection and repair costs low while maintaining confidence in vehicle and passenger safety. This thesis aims to elucidate the feasibility of reduced-order models as alternatives to costly mid- or high-fidelity computational tools for early design and analysis of AAM's. Specifically, aerodynamic flow models will be assesed for their sensitivity and applicability in urban environment applications. Addionally, the effects of multi-tiltrotor downwash on a wing will be evaluated with a number of solvers. The resulting structural loads will be compared to determine the bounds of the tradeoff between model fidelity and solution accuracy.

Date and time: 2026-04-29, 2:00pm

Location: Skiles 246

Committee:
Dr. Marilyn Smith (advisor), School of Aerospace Engineering
Dr. Juergen Rauleder, School of Aerospace Engineering
Dr. Graeme Kennedy, School of Aerospace Engineering
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