Our Projects

Electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft

Project description and overview:

The AMSL Aero Electric VTOL (Vertical Take-off and Landing) aircraft is being developed at a time of rapid innovation in the aerospace sector around the general concept of personal, electrically powered (or hybrid) VTOL vehicles.

The AMSL Aero entrant into this market is their Vertiia configuration which is a novel electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft that combines the vertical take-off and landing capabilities of a helicopter with the efficient high speed flight of a fixed-wing aeroplane. It has several patented features, including the wing structure and the system that tilts the wings from vertical (hover flight mode) to horizontal (aeroplane flight mode) which gives it a unique value proposition.

This new Vertiia configuration will take advantage of filament wound parts due to the unique shape of the Vertiia wing structure and lower sensitivity to local skin thickness.

There are four parts to this project:

  1. Design, build and test a representative full-sized filament wound wing structure and determine the limitations of the filament winding process when applied to an aircraft primary wing structure.
  2. Design, build and test a representative full-sized prototype composite fuselage.
  3. Evaluate, select and prototype manufacturing methods such as automatic fibre placement, resin transfer moulding, resin infusion and vacuum assisted resin transfer moulding techniques.
  4. Assembly of all aircraft components and a successful test flight of the Vertiia eVTOL prototype.

The AMSL basic configuration has some design attributes that are viewed as significant advantages over other eVTOL concepts and which make the design adaptable to a range of different missions.

 

EXPECTED IMPACT

  • Increased spending on R&D has enabled a new growth area of electrical vertical take-off and landing aircraft
  • Increased collaboration with research and industry partners will allow these products to be manufactured in Australia
  • More staff with STEM skills
  • Greater levels of automation in the manufacturing process
  • Greater share of services in total revenue by the use of a ‘power-by-the-hour’ business model

EXPECTED GROWTH

  • AMSL’s projected revenue is forecast to exceed $5 million by 2023, with significant double digit growth from 2024 onwards

EXPECTED JOBS

  • The company expects the full team in Australia to grow significantly in Engineers/Technical Specialists during the pre-production phase until 2021, with growth to the hundreds during production, including growth in manufacturing specialists and management
Contributions:

Government Funds: $400,000 | Industry: $482,108 | In-Kind: $150,000

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