Kitty Hawk

Project Heaviside

I worked as a Mechanical Engineer for Kitty Hawk’s Project Heaviside, developing an eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft. It was exciting and inspiring to advance urban air mobility alongside an amazing team.

In my work at kitty hawk I:

Owned test campaigns for structural and electromechanical systems including propellers, inceptor, landing gear, pylons, seatbelts, control surfaces, pitot, and parachute hardware

• Led propeller development and validation test campaigns for loads (rotating DAQ), bird strike, blade twist as a function of RPM (strobe), tension, endurance, thrust, and pitch

• Consistently delivered ahead of schedule fixtures, instrumentation, documentation, and testing

• Developed team processes for test documentation and work tracking (Jira)

Designed door and occupant packaging of eVTOL aircraft

• Conducted UX studies with physical mockup and VR, delivering ergo, and visibility requirements

• Designed doors (CAD) and trades of latch mechanisms for access control requirements

Led control surface development as responsible engineer

• Designed and tested control surfaces for next generation vehicle using living hinges

• Developed control surface loads in collaboration with aerodynamics and controls teams

Drove New Product Introduction of inceptor

• Collaborated with mechanisms, hardware, manufacturing, and systems to iterate on design

• Developed manufacturing and assembly processes, delivering complete workflow to integration

• Designed and programmed automated fixture for fatigue testing of all inceptor axes