Machine learning-based surrogates for eVTOL performance prediction and design optimization

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<p>Predicting the performance of different electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicle designs is paramount to vehicle manufacturers and hobbyists. These vehicles' maximum flight time (endurance) and maximum flight distance (range) depend on design and operational parameters relating to their structure, propulsion system, payload, and mission profile. In recent years, sophisticated physics-based models have been developed to estimate and optimize their aerodynamic, propulsion, and electrical performance. Integrating and simulating those models can closely estimate a vehicle's endurance and range. However, this demands advanced knowledge of different subsystems utilized and extensive computational resources limiting the wide-scale utilization of such models. This paper showcases the development and implementation of a framework to train simpler machine learning-based surrogates. The surrogate models are trained on a limited number of eVTOL performance estimates generated by physics-based models and can mimic them accurately. Forty-seven thousand eVTOL vehicle designs were simulated to generate the training data for various machine-learning models. These include several decision tree models, K-nearest neighbor models, linear regression models, and a multi-perceptron neural network model. Vehicle design and operational parameters such as propeller size, payload mass, drag coefficient, velocity, and motor and battery parameters are used as features, and vehicle endurance and range estimates are used as targets. Compared to the alternative approaches, these surrogate models are computationally very efficient and easy to understand and use. Testing on hold-out datasets shows excellent performance, with multiple models having a mean average percentage error of less than 2% in estimating vehicle endurance and range.</p>