Orca eVTOL Emergency Medical Aircraft by Soma Varga, Zsolt Koltai and Akos Matyus is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2021 Bronze A' Design Award in Aerospace and Aircraft Design Competition Category.
BronzeAircraft· 2021
Orca eVTOL Emergency Medical Aircraft
by Soma Varga, Zsolt Koltai and Akos Matyus
Client: Orca Aerospace
Bronze A' Design Award Winner in Aircraft Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #112394The Design
About Orca eVTOL Emergency Medical Aircraft
Orca eVTOL is an emergency medical aircraft with electric vertical take-off and landing capability. The single pilot aircraft carries three people and is built from carbon fibre composite materials. Seven independent electric motors, powered by lithium-based batteries, provide propulsion and add safety. The wingspan is 12.45 metres and the length is 8.1 metres. Electric motors start within seconds, while turbine engines need a warm-up time. Winged flight allows a higher cruise speed than rotorcraft, so patients reach treatment sooner.
The Recognition
About the Bronze A' Design Award
Orca eVTOL Emergency Medical Aircraft is a Bronze A' Design Award winner, a highly prestigious recognition granted to outstanding designs distinguished by creativity, ingenuity, and astuteness. Bronze winners are amply skillful and strikingly creative artifacts that authenticate the vast experience, imagination, and resourcefulness of their designers. Orca eVTOL Emergency Medical Aircraft is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished object that is notably professional and innovative. This Bronze A' Design Award-winning design incorporates best practices in art, science, design, and technology, and is excellent for its attention to detail. Orca eVTOL Emergency Medical Aircraft splendidly satisfies needs, touches desires, charms feelings, and appeals to curiosity.
Interviews
Design Interview
What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?
We looked on the current emergency medical market and shockingly found two problems that are continuously overlooked. First, due to the globalization, the average response time of emergency medical services increased by nearly 40% in the past 20 years. On the other hand, using outdated gas turbine technology in these missions, an increasingly higher and higher operational cost results for the rotorcraft operators. There is a clear need from both the patient's side for a faster rescue, and both on the operational side for a more profitable mission profile. That is where the Orca eVTOL offers significant progress. With the electric propulsion and fixed-wing aircraft like cruise flight, it is able to reduce response time by several minutes, while due to the lower system complexity and electricity as propellant, a remarkable operational cost reduction is achievable.
What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?
We wanted to merge functionality with aesthetics. In general aerodynamics result in appealing shapes and forms, but the focus was always on maximized system performance. It was crucial to optimize the external geometry and to design the components for the lowest allowable structural weight, all required to offer high take-off and cruise speed.
What are your future plans for this award winning design?
Already during the A 'Design Competition we set out to establish a strong founding team behind the project. The ultimate goal has always been to reach the actual flight with the fully functioning prototype. We currently work on the subscale version of the Orca that is a remotely piloted vehicle used as a proof of concept. We strive to have the full scale prototype aircraft type certified and ready to enter into service by the end of 2026.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- The Orca eVTOL is a vertical take-off and landing aerial vehicle equipped with electric propulsion. The single piloted Orca has been designed to compeete with current emergency rotorcraft by transporing patients at higher speed, lower operational cost and incerased safety due the installed 7 independent electric engines and advanced aerodynamic design. The possible range of the carbon composite aircraft with three person on board and with current battery technology is up to 120 km.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The wingspan of the Orca is 12.45m, its length is 8.1m with an overall heigth of 2.4m.
- Tags
- VTOL, electric propulsion, emergency medical services, aircraft, battery propulsion
- Production Technology
- The proposed concept uses high performance carbon fibre composite materials, common in aerospace industry. The integrated electric motors have already a proven background in motorsport and run entirely on lithium-based batteries.
- Design Challenge
- The most challenging part of a VTOL design is to combine design methodology of fixed wing aircraft and rotorcraft, two different regimes of aviation that are well documented when investigated separately but is still full of unknown obstacles when treated as a single regime. Having to run engines effectively while hover and during levelled cruise flight introduced energy management challenges.
- Research
- The design of the Orca eVTOL started with setting the flight performance requirements such as minimum range, payload, and cruise flight speed. All these emerged from a typical flight profile for a rotorcraft used in emergency medical operations. After deriving the strict performance requirements, a major effort was made to design an easy to operate yet safe aircraft architecture. This resulted in a so called three-surface aircraft with top positioned main wing and with axisymmetric fuselage.
- Inspiration
- The concept of the Orca electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOL) was designed to challenge the current rotorcraft market used in the emergency medical services. With continuously advancing battery and electric engine technology, the concepts of eVTOLs became feasible. In the airborne medical services, introducing electric propulsion and winged aircraft concepts, the response time can be significantly reduced. All this to help avoid fatal outcomes of such situations.
- Project Duration
- The time required to design the Orca eVTOL from the first sketches to this stage covered six months. The design team has its headquarter in Pécs, Hungary.
- Operation Flow
- When alarming the rotorcraft medical services, the gas turbine engines of the rotorcraft have a warm-up time. This can mean up to 3 min before the take-off. With electric engines all this is reduced to seconds only. Due to the flight speed limits placed on the helicopter’s rotating blades, the wing borne flight of the Orca allows a higher maximum cruise speed. All these reduce the time form the emergency call until the treatment of the patients and the transfer flight back to the hospital.
- Patents
- Patented. Patent No.: 008215388-0001 issued by the European Union Intellectual Property Office. Patent holders: Soma Ádám Varga, Zsolt Koltai, Ákos Matyus.
- Team Members
- Soma Varga
Ákos Matyus
Zsolt Koltai
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