In recent years, the relentless advance of climate change forces society to adapt to more sustainable modes of transportation. In a not so distant future, urban transport is envisioned to expand to the skies with new innovative electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft. Although this idea seems very futuristic, the concept of an electric aircraft might not be as far away as previously thought. ONAerospace aims to take part in this future by designing its own eVTOL aircraft. This project focuses on the ongoing propulsion system design. On its first iteration the project introduced ducted fan propulsion, electric motors and bateries. This second iteration delves into ducted fan performance in order to give a more accurate design of the aircraft¿s propulsive units, and better predict its performance capabilities. Two propulsion configurations have been studied separately: a takeoff and hovering configuration, which uses two ducted fans before the wings and one coaxial ducted fan embedded inside the aircraft¿s tail; and a cruise configuration which uses just the two front engines. The propulsive units are designed to be adaptive ducted fan. This means that, each ducted fan can morph and adapt to optimize its performance to any given condition. Ducted fan performance has been predicted using two theoretical analyses: momentum theory, and blade element theory. These methods have been used to size the propulsive units in order to ensure that the thrust requirements are met. Also, the power required in each configuration and flight phase has been computed. Finally, experimental data on the effects of varying different design parameters was reviewed with the objective to give a more detailed design of each ducted fan.
