Tiltrotor eVTOL Simulation

The target vehicle was a tiltrotor — fixed wing in cruise, helicopter in hover, something complicated in between. I built a 6-DOF model with Blade Element Momentum Theory for the rotors, first-principles lift and drag for the wing, and a finite-state transition logic to manage the tilt schedule.

The interesting answers weren't about whether the vehicle flew. They were about what the flight control system has to give up to trade between vertical and forward modes. Half the simulation was spent finding the transition corridor where the rotors stall before the wing lifts.