Toward urban air mobility: Air taxis with side-by-side rotors

In this high-resolution visualization of NASA’s side-by-side, intermeshing rotor air taxi concept, researchers are working to understand complex rotor air flow interactions, simulated using high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics methods. The image/video shows the vortex wake, colored according to pressure. Intermeshing rotors offer the advantage of being more compact while being more efficient in cruise than twin-motored helicopters without overlapping rotors. How do NASA engineers conduct such research? They do so with the help of some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, giving them the capability to solve complex computational problems in just a few days.