Vertical Flight Society Awards Students in VTOL Design Competition

Winners of the Vertical Flight Society (VFS)’s 38th Annual Student Design Competition, entitled “2025 Unmanned Vertical Lift for Medical Equipment Distribution” have been revealed. The University of Maryland (UMD) took first place in both the graduate and undergraduate categories and the undergraduate team also won the Bonus Weight Optimization task. The team from the University of Kansas took Best New Undergraduate Entrant honors.

Each year, the VFS competition challenges students to design a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft that meets specified requirements, providing a practical exercise for engineering students at colleges and universities to promote student interest in VTOL engineering and technology. The Boeing Company was the sponsor of this year’s competition with a total of $12,500 awarded in prize money. In addition, Altair sponsored the optional bonus structural weight-optimization task with an additional $2,000 in prize money.

Academic teams from around the world submitted entries for the competition, with a total of 10 proposals from four different countries. The goal of this year’s Request for Proposals (RFP) was to develop an unmanned vertical lift concept that could deliver, at high speed, up to 50 kg (110 lb) payloads to end-user customer sites up to a 50 km (31 mile) radius, and to logistics centers up to 200 km (124 miles) away. The sizing was such so that the vehicle could make a difference within a future pandemic or natural disaster. Proposal submissions required only 2020-year technologies in order to support an initial entry into service in 2025.

Two members of each of the first-place winning teams are invited to the 78th Annual Forum & Technology Display — planned for May 10–12, 2021 in Fort Worth, Texas — to present the details of their designs.

Interested in more on VTOL aircraft? Check out  Urban Air Mobility – The Korean Solution.

The Annual Student Design Competition sponsorship rotates between Airbus, Leonardo Helicopters, The Boeing Company, Bell, Sikorsky Aircraft and the US Army Research Lab. The 2021-2022 RFP for the 39th Annual Student Design Competition “eVTOL Air Taxi for Passengers with Reduced Mobility (PRM),” is sponsored by Bell and is also now accepting proposals. Next year’s RFP will challenge students to design an all-electric VTOL aircraft that accommodates passengers with a broad spectrum of mobility difficulties or other disabilities for urban air mobility (UAM) missions.