eVTOL Battery Drop Test + [2025 Update]

The test was part of an ongoing research program on the Integrated Crashworthiness Safety approach of future Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft. NIAR-AVET evaluated the crashworthiness performance of eVTOL battery packs and their surrounding structure during a free fall of 50 feet. The primary objective of this test program and simulation study was to identify the behavior (Structural, Thermal, and Electrical) of the battery pack during emergency landing conditions in order to provide the FAA information that may be used to define future requirements and how its performance will impact the selection of composite materials for the construction of an airframe capable of providing an adequate level of safety.

"By the way, do you know where we can potentially recycle a 750 lbs battery?"
I did not, off the top of my head. Being intelligent across different fronts does not, as far as I am aware, come with supplier network psychic powers, a conviction my chief scientist and main collaborator seemed to hold with inexplicable confidence.
What made the timing of that question particularly memorable was what had just preceded it. In the same conversation, my chief scientist had casually shattered my worldview by introducing me to ChatGPT and demonstrating its capabilities live, including making it generate in under two minutes the Python numerical homogenization code I had spent eight months of my Master's degree building. That being said, one worldview collapses so another can rise, and I had already been preparing for the AI wave by taking a neural network course taught by my new advisor, and investigating machine learning applications within my PhD research, so the blow landed on reasonably prepared ground.
Within a month, I was onboarded onto an additional project supporting an eVTOL battery 50-foot drop test, handling testing and data acquisition alongside D. and M., with a team of undergraduate researchers and engineers. It was our first battery drop of any kind, and it remains to this day the largest and heaviest battery I have encountered in any professional capacity (2025 update: still holds).
The safety footprint was appropriately expanded for the occasion. A fire marshal, a large water tank, and a standing fire crew were all on site. The test took place in an open field in ice-cold weather, and the lighting was, once again, a genuine problem for DIC purposes. No explosion however. The test yielded better results than anticipated, and the learning curve was steep enough to make it clear we would be taking on more battery-related work in the future.
As for the recycling question, after several phone debates, a handful of concerned organizations calling back to ask what exactly we were doing with a battery that size and whether anything would seep into the ground (answer: proprietary, and no, we have a full concrete basin for testing), I eventually found a contractor willing and equipped to take on the remnants. Shoutout to Chad H., who did not flinch. (2025 update: I still get asked where to recycle large batteries, but now my answer is ready and that excellent contractor still is my go-to contact).
A side note that I feel compelled to include: if you ever find someone gracious enough to handle a large battery load, do not mix in metal or composite scraps, and do not be difficult with the people who make pre- and post-test cleanup possible. The goodwill of suppliers who go above and beyond is finite, and the kind of work we do makes us acutely dependent on it. What makes the occasional lapse in basic professional courtesy particularly bewildering is that the nature of our own work puts us on the supplier end of that same dynamic regularly enough that we should know better.
Some collaborators half-joke that a certain flavor of dismissiveness correlates with academic credentials and with the kind of identity investment that comes from living too exclusively inside the academic bubble, which is its own irony, given that the work itself demands positioning across disciplines, industries, and professional cultures that have no patience for puritanical boundaries.
I am planning to get my PhD the following year and will report back on the dickery coefficient. (2025 update: I got my PhD in late 2024 and I have since unlocked a kaleidoscopic and simultaneous distaste for pompous academic behavior, performative intellectualism, condescension toward academic AND non-academic knowledge, and the reflexive glorification of blue-collar work. Congratulate me, I am not automatically in anyone's good graces, which I consider a predictable outcome.)