The application of several academics led by Prof Sergey Karabasov to join the UK Vertical Lift Network (VLN) has been successful. The Centre for Intelligent Transport has now joined leading research active universities, national aerospace institutions and industrial research bodies in the UK, who strive to achieve comprehensive responses to, and deliver a coherent vision for, future vertical lift challenges. Primary goals of VLN are to facilitate collaborative research and attract funding.

Activities of the Centre for Intelligent Transport relevant for VLN include:

• Aerodynamic modelling (reduced order/high-fidelity across scales/fluid-structure-interaction), redesign of the rotor blade and coaxial rotors
• Aerodynamic adjoint-shape optimisation of propellers/rotors using a range of turbulence models of different fidelity
• Digital-displacement-pump technology for distributed rotor propulsion systems, efficiently and accurately controlling multiple rotors from a single power source
• Analysis/design/optimisation of the control laws for single and multi-rotor Drones, Vertical Take-Off and Landing and Vertical Short Take-Off and Landing aircraft, with fundamental nonlinear dynamics
• Design of multi-rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for autonomously fabricating structural elements and multi-agent-aerial-robotic systems for environmental monitoring
• High-resolution measurements of unsteady rotor blade/vortex interaction and tilted rotors, experimental aerodynamics and aeroacoustics
• High-resolution installed propeller/rotor flow/noise modelling using scale-resolved simulations accelerated on GPU cards