The Vertical Flight Society's Annual Forum & Technology Display is the world's leading international technical event on vertical flight technology. This year, the four-day virtual meeting included more than 226 technical papers on every discipline from Acoustics to Unmanned Systems. Forum Proceedings papers can be purchased as individual pdf files or as CD-ROMs from the Vertical Flight Online Library.
Every year, the best paper in each technical discipline is selected by the Society's Technical Committees. All of the best papers from each technical discipline from every Annual Forum since 2004 – including the overall Alfred Gessow Best Paper Award – are recognized as some of the most important technical contributions in the field of vertical flight.
The Forum 77 winning technical papers are linked below.
| Technical Area | Title of Paper | Author(s) |
| Aerodynamics: Winner of the Alfred Gessow Forum Best Paper Award | Does Scatter Matter? Improved Understanding of UH-60A Wind Tunnel Rotor Measurements Using Data-Driven Clustering and CREATE™-AV Helios | Manikandan Ramasamy, Rohit Jain, US Army Combat Capability Development Command, Aviation & Missile Center; Thomas R. Norman, NASA Ames Research Center |
| Acoustics | Acoustics Analysis of a Quiet Helicopter for Air Taxi Operations | Sicheng (Kevin) Li, Seongkyu Lee, University of California, Davis |
| Advanced Vertical Flight | Structural Design and Aeromechanical Analysis of a Next-Generation Mars Hexacopter Rotor | Cheng Chi, Ravi Lumba, Anubhav Datta, University of Maryland |
| Aircraft Design | Multidisciplinary Trim Analysis Using Improved Optimization, Image Analysis, and Machine Learning Algorithms | Thomas A. Herrmann, Roberto Celi, James D. Baeder, University of Maryland |
| Avionics & Systems | Deep Learning Based Obstacle Awareness from Airborne Optical Sensors | Manogna Ammalladene-Venkata, Omkar Halbe, Christian Seidel, Airbus Helicopters; Christine Groitl, Christoph Stahl, Airbus Defense & Space |
| Crash Safety (best overall in Vehicle Integrity disciplines) | Contribution to Improvement of Helicopter Ditching Capability Achieved within the SARAH European Research Project | Séverin Halbout, Airbus Helicopters; Benjamin Bouscasse, Ecole Centrale Nantes, Yoann Jus, BV Solutions M&O; Angélique Jullien, Harish Karekyathanahalli Prakash, Altair |
| Crew Stations & Human Factors | Investigation and Evaluation of a Multimodal Pilot Assistance System for Helicopter Operations | Tanja Martini, Phillipp Mevenkamp, Nikolas Peinecke, Michael Jones, German Aerospace Center (DLR); Jürgen Schmidt, Airbus Helicopters |
| Dynamics | Aeroelastic Loads and Stability of Swept-Tip Hingeless Tiltrotors Toward 400-knots Flutter-Free Cruise | Seyhan Gul, Anubhav Datta, University of Maryland |
| Electric VTOL (best overall in Vehicle Design disciplines) | Development of "Aria", a Compact, Ultra-Quiet Personal Electric Helicopter | David Colemen, Atanu Halder, Farid Saemi, Carl Runco, Hunter Denton, Bochan Lee, Moble Benedict, Texas A&M University; Vishaal Sumramanian, Crystal Instruments; Eric Greenwood, Pennsylvania State University; Vinod Lakshminaryan, Science & Technology Corporation, NASA Ames Research Center |
| Handling Qualities (tied for best overall in Aeromechanics disciplines) | High-Speed Rotorcraft Pitch Axis Response Type Investigation | Tom Berger, US Army DEVCOM AvMC; Mark B. Tischler, Tischler Aeronautics; Joseph F. Horn, Pennsylvania State University |
| Health and Usage Monitoring Systems (best overall in Systems Engineering disciplines) | Probabilistic Damage Estimation for Rotorcraft Condition-Based Maintenance | Dakota Musso, Jonathan Rogers, Georgia Institute of Technology |
| History | Floyd Carlson: The Legacy and Contributions of One of America’s Greatest Rotary Wing Test Pilots | Paul J. Fardink, US Army (Retired) as the winner of the Bernard Lindenbaum Best Historical Paper |
| Manufacturing Tech. & Processing | Variational Tolerance Analysis (VTA) – Design and Manufacturing Optimization using Statistical Simulation | Andrew Lavoie, Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin Co. |
| Modeling & Simulation | Real Time System Identification Methods for Estimation of Slight Length on the Load Stabilization System (LSS) | Christina M. Ivler, University of Portland; Derek Sikora, Vita Inclinata Technologies |
| Operations | A Retrospective & Historical Analysis of Vertical Lift Infrastructure Accidents for the Purpose of Operational Risk Identification and Accident Prevention | Rex J. Alexander, Five-Alpha LLC; Raymond A. Syms, HeliExperts International LLC; Cliff Johnson, FAA William J. Hughes Technical Center; John Roberts, US DOT Transportation Safety Institute |
| Product Support Systems Technology | The 525 Interactive Electronic Maintenance Manual Linking Advanced Avionics and Wiring to Fault Isolation | Mike Gralish, Bell Textron Inc. |
| Propulsion | Distributed Electric Propulsion and Flight Control Concept to Meet EASA SC-VTOL-01 10-9 Catastrophic Failure Criteria | Patrick R. Darmstadt, Ephraim Chen, Allan Beiderman, Sheevangi Pathak, Andrew Arkebauer, Caitlin Dillard, The Boeing Co.; Mihir P. Mistry, Anduril Industries, Inc. |
| Safety | Hazard Analysis Failure Modes, Effects, and Criticality Analysis for NASA Revolutionary Vertical Lift Technology Concept Vehicles | Allan Beiderman, Patrick R. Darmstadt, Caitlin Dillard, The Boeing Co.; Chris Silva, NASA Ames Research Center |
| Structures & Materials | Surface Tolerant Adhesives for Bonded Airframe Structures | Majid Sharifi, Huntsman Corporation; Ian Brown, AVX Aircraft Co.; Gyaneshwar Tandon, University of Dayton; Delany Jordan, US Army DEVCOM AvMC |
| Systems Engineering Tools & Processes | Approach to Architecture Development Assuming a Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) for a Family of Systems (FoS) Acquisition | Thomas DuBois, Michael Orlovsky, John Kisor, Robert Matthews, L3 Harris |
| Test & Evaluation (best overall in Operations & Product Support disciplines) | Combining Simultaneous Density and Velocity Measurements of Rotor Blade Tip Vortices under Cyclic Pitch Conditions | Johannes N. Braukmann, Andreas Goerttler, C. Christian Wolf, Clemens Schwarz, Markus Raffel, German Aerospace Center (DLR) |
| Unmanned VTOL | Deterministic Reconfiguration of Flight Control Systems for Multirotor UAV Package Delivery | Anthony Gong, US Army DEVCOM AvMC; Mark B. Tischler, Tischler Aeronautics; Ronald A. Hess, University of California, Davis |