A rooftop landing platform for air taxis began showing structural cracks after just weeks of operation. The 3D expert analysis revealed that the vibrations from the eVTOL rotors dangerously matched the building's natural frequency, a resonance phenomenon that no traditional calculation had predicted. The solution came through an integrated digital twin.
Technical workflow: From laser scanning to fatigue simulation 🛠️
The forensic team began by capturing the actual geometry of the vertiport and its supporting structure with a FARO scanner, processing the point cloud in FARO Scene to obtain a precise mesh. This model was imported into Bentley OpenSite, where the building's digital twin was recreated, including material properties and structural connections. The critical step was transferring the model to Ansys Mechanical, where a modal and harmonic analysis was performed. Load cycles generated by the rotors at different RPMs were simulated, identifying that the 12.4 Hz frequency excited the second vibration mode of the slab, amplifying stresses at the joints beyond the concrete's fatigue limit.
The predictive value of the virtual replica in urban air mobility 🚁
This case demonstrates that digital twins are not just visualization tools, but failure prediction laboratories. If the vertiport had been modeled before construction, the vibration analysis would have recommended installing dynamic dampers or redesigning the slab's frequency. For the future of urban air mobility, where existing buildings will become transport nodes, integrating 3D scanning and fatigue simulation into a digital twin will be a mandatory standard, not an expert analysis option.
Which modal analysis methodology was key in the digital twin to identify the exact resonance frequency that caused the cracks in the vertiport platform?
(PS: My digital twin is right now in a meeting, while I'm here modeling. So technically, I'm in two places at once.)