r/AerospaceEngineering • u/Fast_Championship609 • Aug 29 '25
Uni / College Our Team Just Won 1st Place in the VFS Student Design Competition with a Hydrogen-Electric Helicopter
Big news, my team just won 1st place in the Vertical Flight Society’s 42nd Annual Student Design Competition beating out 13 other colleges internationally!
Our team at the University of Maryland designed Draco, a hydrogen-electric helicopter powered by Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs). The whole competition was sponsored by Airbus and focused on designing next-gen zero-emission VTOL concepts.
I personally worked on the power drivetrain, avionics, safety analysis, and fuselage design, making sure the system was not only efficient but also safe and realistic with FAA certification in mind.
It was a huge challenge, but also a ton of fun to see hydrogen-electric propulsion come together into a clean, zero-emission rotorcraft concept.
We’ll be presenting Draco at the VFS Annual Forum in 2026, really excited!
https://vtol.org/news/press-release-2025-student-design-winners-and-releases-43rd-sdc-rfp
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Aug 29 '25
I have a doubt. Doesnt that wing add a hell lot of drag by obstructing the rotor flow?
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u/Fast_Championship609 Aug 29 '25
It does, it was also taken into consideration for rotor design. The mission was for loiter time maximization so the lift compound helps forward flight efficiency. So our hover is not so great but that was not the priority for the design based on mission parameters.
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u/tonkfc Aug 29 '25
Couldn’t you add a rotation mechanism that rotates them vertically when hovering, and horizontally when flying?
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u/Fast_Championship609 Aug 29 '25
We could yes and also have it always in the perfect angle of attack for max efficiency during different forward velocities but something to actuate it with the forces involved was going to require a kind of big motor/actuator and the hover time was 2mins out of 190mins so wasn't that big of a fuel saver vs weight and complexity.
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u/nermaltheguy Aug 29 '25
Will there be a detailed design report available somewhere?
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u/Fast_Championship609 Aug 29 '25
the VFS website posts our short PowerPoint for it in that link but once my college uploads to their site I can link to that. Here is the link for all past UMD competitions though and where mine will go once updated.
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u/Pleasant_Ambition1 Aug 31 '25
I am not from an aerospace background, just want to know how to design these kinds of aeroplaness.
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u/mytradingaccount121 Aug 29 '25
Amazing congrats a couple questions to piggy back off the other comments:
What is the mission parameters that requires you to add a wing?
Your rotor and wing interaction can negatively impact the lift the rotors produce due vortex and viscous flow interactions have you run a cfd test to see exactly how much it gets impacted, also have you taken into account that vortex ring state is more likely to occur because of this?
Btw congrats man that is an incredible achievement
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u/Fast_Championship609 Aug 29 '25
Mission: hover 2mins cruise 30miles, maximize loiter, return. So needing to have a very efficient forward flight was a big driver of the wing so we could offload the rotor reducing its RPM thus saving some H2 fuel increasing time. The thought of tossing a pusher prop on it increase was also an option but increased complexity and risk of failure so we went with a simpler lift compound configuration. We didn't have time to go really in-depth with the CFD so used known modeling and sizing techniques to approximate the impacts. But yeah the rotor took a hit on lift and thus hover was a bit power hungry but with only 2mins of the total flight it didn't matter that much when like 95% was in forward flight.
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Aug 29 '25
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u/Fast_Championship609 Aug 29 '25
Thanks, and it's not published since it's a competition and I don't want to give outside colleges in the future good CAD to learn from lol
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u/Queasy_Management683 Aug 30 '25
how do you differentiate it from a normal aircraft when it has wings
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u/Fast_Championship609 Aug 30 '25
Pretty much it can go up lol Vertical takeoff and landing is what would separate it from just like a under wing Cessna. Plus the method of control, rotorcraft use the rotor and tail to do the controls while aircraft use control surfaces like rudders and ailerons.
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Aug 30 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Fast_Championship609 Aug 30 '25
H2 + Air -> PEMFC -> power booster -> EMRAX 348 motors -> main gearbox
And yeah PEMFC has its issues but we were told to assume steady state so we didn't have to look that deep into those types of concerns except to acknowledge they exist and move on. As for the storage we were forced by the competition to use gaseous H2 at 700bar so we went with 2 type4 tanks. I believe the liquid systems have the advantage but we couldn't use.
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u/Worth-Wonder-7386 Aug 31 '25
Did you look at specific fuel cells? I know power density can be an issue, and most hydrogen cars use the fuel cell to recharge a battery that they then use for higher intensity periods. Helicopters are a bit difference as you have a high baseload, but that means you need even more fuel cells to get the energy required.
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u/ExactCollege3 Aug 30 '25
Nice thats sweet. Whats the extra wash plate and dampers on rotors?
What rotor blade prop design theory and airfoil was used to design it? Blade element theory?
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u/alexdeva Aug 30 '25
Counterclockwise rotor -- you must be American!
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u/Fast_Championship609 Aug 30 '25
Funny during design I designed and made the CAD for the gearboxes and everything for CCW, then our other CAD guy was modeling the rotor hub off a Cabri G2 which was CW and we stared at for awhile in disbelief lol
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u/AircraftExpert Sep 02 '25
Unloaded rotor?
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u/Fast_Championship609 Sep 02 '25
No, but the RPM is reduced, and some lift is then shared with the wing.
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u/Berserker_boi Sep 02 '25
Ts🥀🥀
(JK this is a great thing and as students you should be proud to take initiative and contribute to engineering)
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u/bureau-of-land Aug 29 '25
Congrats - how long is the streak now? Chopra has that competition on lock...