PAV (Flying Cars)

PERSONAL AIR VEHICLES

(Flying Cars)
THE FUTURE OF AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY...

NAME : SARTHAK S. SALUNKE

COLLEGE : Dr.D.Y.PATIL COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, AKURDI, PUNE

REGISTARION ID : OAN 2357

E-MAIL ADDRESS: sarthak.salunke@gmail.com

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Introduction:

“The fiction has come true”.

This can be said about the future of automotive industry. The dream of a “flying car” has
been with us since the dawn of aviation which will aim to introduce aviation to the society as
the most efficient and common method of commuting – a successor to the modern-day
automobile. A number of flight vehicles with the potential to fulfil this dream, have even
been built and tested in the past, and some related projects are still under development. The
compatibility of existing technologies with each other on the same airplane were researched
upon and a practical and novel environment-friendly PAV was designed. Many new
technologies will be used for control and, possibly, navigation. A personal aircraft would
entail features like low emissions, reduced noise-levels, easy operations and portability which
would enable it to serve the society on a large-scale in an efficient, effective and comfortable
manner. Its revolutionary contribution would be to make airplanes as personal and as
common a way of travelling as automobiles today.

History:
The revolution of flying the vehicles started from the discovery of the “Hovercraft” way back
in 1716. The principle it uses to lift from the ground is the formation of air-cushion by
pushing the air downwards through its skirt.
Then, after the inventions of engines, automobiles and especially aeroplanes people stated to
think on the concept of flying car or the roadable aircraft.
In the last 100 years there have been more than 70 attempts to develop a successful Flying
Car ' clearly the concept has been enduringly attractive. Very few attempts have met with any
technical success, however, and those that actually worked to any extent had poor
performance.

 The concepts of roadable aircraft and flying car:

 Roadable aircraft:- This concept has been inherited and inspired from the
aeroplanes. Roadable aircrafts are basically the personal aircrafts which can be used
as cars on the roads and will take flight if we open its wings wide and rode the car on
the runway.Attempts at roadable aircraft have been made since the advent of the
airplane itself. Only fourteen years after the Wright brothers first flew, Glenn Curtiss

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tried to develop a flying automobile. The Arrowbile was the first vehicle designed as
a roadable aircraft that actually flew. This gave other inventors hope in being
recognized for roadable aircraft designs. In 1946 , “Airphibian” was the first to gain
certification by an organized flight agency, the Civil Aviation Administration.
Another attempt at developing a roadable aircraft was made in the 1950s. In 1956,
Molt Taylor designed and built the Aerocar I.

Concept of a rodable aircraft

 Flying cars:- Flying car is not much different than the concept of roadable air craft
but its simply the car which takes flight at its place and thrusts to the destination
needed, with no need to get stuck in the heavy traffics with no need of the long
runways. It resembles the vehicles from the sci-fi movies or the most discussed UFOs.
Flying car is though not yet the practical concept Urban Aeronautics’ X-Hawk, the
Moller Skycar M400 and the UFO-shaped M200x.

Designing:

The design is the critical point for any product. While designing the flying cars we have to
take into consideration some important concepts.
The difficulties of designing a successful Flying Car are enormous. The design requirements
of a ground vehicle are so different to those of an airplane, that the task of trying to marry the
two sets of requirements together into one craft presents many challenges.
In order for an car or an aircraft to fly straight and level, the following
relationships must be true:

 Thrust = Drag

 Lift = Weight

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If, for any reason, the amount of drag becomes larger than the amount of thrust, the plane will
slow down. If the thrust is increased so that it is greater than the drag, the plane will speed up.
Similarly, if the amount of lift drops below the weight of the airplane, the plane will descend.
By increasing the lift, the pilot can make the airplane climb.

Thrust: - Thrust is an aerodynamic force that must be created by an airplane in order to

overcome the drag (notice that thrust and drag act in opposite directions in the figure above).

Drag: - Drag is an aerodynamic force that resists the motion of an object moving through a
fluid (air and water are both fluids).

Weight: - This one is the easiest. Every object on earth has weight (including air).

Lift:-Lift is the aerodynamic force that holds an airplane in the air, and is probably the
trickiest of the four aerodynamic forces to explain without using a lot of math. On airplanes,
most of the lift required to keep the plane aloft is created by the wings (although some is
created by other parts of the structure).
For a smooth transit, the body and wings of an aircraft needs to be aerodynamically designed,
so that it can reduce form-drag1 and pass through the layers of the air-molecules with least
resistance. Apart from a streamlined shape, the Dodo will resort to a mainframe design which
will help generate the Lift required for the entire aircraft and its passengers. According to the
Kutta-Zhukovsky theorem:

Lift = Airspeed x Air circulation x Density of medium x Wing Span

When using the aircraft as an every-day vehicle, people will rarely have an option of
controlling the on-going wind currents (which affects the air circulation around the wing), or
the density of the air around them. The air circulation occurs upon the interaction of the wind
with the wing. By mechanically stirring the air, one can create the circulation needed for lift
known as the Magnus Effect.
But the wings with larger span may cause accidents and with smaller span will not give the
appropriate flight to the car.
Thus, the concept BWB (blended wind body) came in. The body of the car is given the
aerodynamic shape so that the entire body generates the lift for the flight, thus minimizing the
wing-span required for take-off and transit.

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Engines and motors:

A Wankel engine is use in the PAV due to its multi-fuel capability, low weight, reduced
engine cooling drag and small frontal area. It is also more reliable since it is made of fewer
parts, and contains no valves or cams. A lower gas exhaust temperature is another important
reason for using this engine; it prevents the aircraft, and the region surrounding it, from
heating up.
Still some evidences with the use of jet engines and stepper and servo motors used for driving
PAVs have been observed but they do not match the performance by Wankel engine.

Take-Off and Landing procedures:

The take-off and landing procedure of the PAVs are different for different types of vehicles.
The roadable aircrafts like PAVs will need runways for takeoff and landing. But this
drawback is overcome by VTOL system.
VTOL system is the vertical takeoff and launching system which is used in Harrier fighter
planes by U.S. Defence services. In this system the PAV will rise in the air to the desired
height vertically and then will be given the forward thrust to displace it in that direction or to
drive the vehicle. Thus, it will need the air flow downwards to loft its own weight plus the
passengers.
Lift of VTOL = Thrust/ (Engine weight + Fuel weight)
Thus the ducted fan system can be used as been tried by the U.S. Army in 1960’s in the
Piasecki “Flying Jeeps”.
X-hawk is designed for the rescue purpose which uses the VTOL with the help of large fans.

X-Hawk on hi-rise rescue mission

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TYPES OF VTOL:
The various possibilities of facilitating VTOL using jet lift are as follows.

1. Whole aircraft is tilted.

2. Engines or propellers alone are tilted.

3. Jet effluxion .

4. Two different sets of engines.

The most efficient is to use the jet flux system which is installed in harrier fighter planes
which works with the help of swivelling nozzles which give out the exhaust gases to provide
the upper thrust.

Latest updates in the field of PAVs.:

1. “DODO”:- Its the flying vehicle which is the Anglo- Chinese junior college,
Singapore’s final year project. Its the roadable aircraft type PAVs with the BWB
(Blended Wing Body).
2. Milner AirCar will be a completely self-contained four-door, four to five-seat
advanced-composite road-able aircraft (flying car) with foldable main wing in the rear
of the vehicle One or two engines with propellers or ducted fans producing 300 total
HP will carry the aircraft at cruise speeds of 200 MPH for up to 1000 miles.
(Computer simulations indicate level-flight drag to be 250 lbs at 100 MPH, 420 at 200
MPH, and 700 at 250 MPH.) In ground mode, the Milner AirCar will operate as an
automobile and be about the same size as the Toyota Corolla or Honda Civic. A
separate 40hp engine and transmission will power the wheels on the ground. The
non-retractable wheels extend from the 54” wide fuselage. The front wheels have
double a-arm suspension, and the rear wheels are located in the wing just inboard of

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the first wing fold. When changing to air mode, the rear wheels will pivot forward so
less weight is carried by the front wheels and the vehicle has additional ground
clearance. At the same time, the front wheels will pivot downward to keep the vehicle
level. The Air Car will have modern instrumentation with two flat panel displays that
display the appropriate information for air mode and for ground mode.

Milner Car

3. The Transition is designed by Terrafugia Inc. to work as a private aircraft at airspeeds

up to 115 mph on flights of about 450 miles or less at 30 miles per gallon of regular
gas, and then, by automatically folding up its wings in 30 seconds.
4. The Moller Skycar M400 has wings and eight rotary combustion engine powered duct
fans for air travel. When moving around on the ground it has wheels and can be taxied
like most aircraft, using the fan thrust to move it forward and the front wheel to steer.
Ground operation uses the same controls as used for filght. An electric motor might
also be fitted to the front wheel to move around without generating excess engine and
thrust noise.
you could be wondering about is it's ability to travel on the roadways. Many people
discussing the Skycar on the Internet seem confused on this aspect of the vehicle. This
aircraft is not intended as a direct replacement for the car you drive today. Moller's
goal is to make it roadable, meaning that it could safely travel on the road for a short
distance, from say your driveway or garage to a safe open area to transition to the air.
Since the Skycar is neither a traditional airplane or a helicopter, it needs much less

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area to lift-off. Needing only about 35 feet diameter of ground space, as opposed to a
helicopter's 75 feet and the hundreds of feet most airplane require.

Moller sky car m400

Possible Modifications:-

1. The PAVs can be be driven with the compressed air system also with using the
natural air. The air from the surrounding is sucked in and compressed in the
compressor designed for this purpose only. The air is distributed in the piping system
and is throttled through the series of nozzles such that the vehicle will get an upward
thrust due to expansion of the compressed air coming out of the nozzles to reach the
surrounding pressure. The compressed air used in this system will also do the work of
turning the turbines before it will come out of the nozzle which will produce electric
energy as a result to drive the compressor and the suction pump.
2. Magnetic motors can replace the wankel engines in the most advanced PAV up till
today i.e. moller sky car. Magnetic motor gives the same output with very less
spending of the energy. It works on the principle of the magnetism that “ like poles
repel each other”.

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Conclusion:

It is expected that aviation would be taken to yet another level in society. In fifty years from
now, there are bound to be several advancements in technology and aeronautics, and keeping
in view the parameters discussed in the paper, these future innovations can be added to the
aircraft design to yield an even better vehicle for transportation .By bringing air-travel to the
very doorstep of an individual life.

But still totally VTOL embedded PAV is not designed. Using hydrogen or CNG can be used
in PAVs. SOLAR energy harvesting is possible as they will be flying in the open sky to
provide the energy to fly the car.

Still its a long way to go.

References:

1. Rafi Yoeli, Ph.D, President Urban Aeronautics Ltd.; “DUCTED FAN UTILITY
VEHICLES AND OTHER FLYING CARS”; presented to The American Institute of
Aeronautics and Astronautics, November 6th, 2002
2. Aditya singh , Anglo chinese junior college , Singapore ; project report on “DODO:
Flying In The Future”
3. “Flying car takes its first flight”; a news report on 18th march 2009.
4. “Roadable aircraft”, A Virginia tech project report

5. www.moller.com

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