Results

The Results page is where a finished simulation tells you what your powertrain actually does. This page documents every number, column, chart and flag on it — what each one is, how to read it (which way is better), what a reasonable value looks like, and the one thing people most often misread. The ⓘ next to any result links straight to its section here.

Results come in three flavours that share a common core:

• Single-point results — one operating point: the shared core below.
• Sweep results — the shared core plus a Plots and a Data tab. See How to read a sweep.
• Dynamic (time-domain) results — the shared core plus a Time-Series and an Events tab, driven by a scrubber. See How to read a time-domain run.

If a result is flagged in red, see the dedicated Warnings explained page for the threshold it tripped and what to do.

Overview — the KPI strip

The seven tiles at the top are the headline numbers for the run. Read them first; everything below explains where they come from.

Total Thrust

The combined lift produced by every rotor at this operating point — the sum of the per-rotor thrusts.

How to read it. Higher is more lift. As a rule of thumb you want total thrust around twice the all-up weight for responsive flight; 1:1 barely hovers.

Watch out. Thrust falls as the battery sags, so judge it near the end-of-discharge voltage, not just at full charge.

Related: Thrust units · per-rotor Thrust

Total Power

The total electrical power the pack delivers at this point, summed across all rotors — the number that drains your battery.

How to read it. Lower power for the same thrust means a more efficient system.

Watch out. This is electrical (bus) power, not shaft power — the gap between them is your ESC and motor losses, shown in the power-flow diagram.

Related: g / W · Pack

System η

Overall powertrain efficiency (η, the Greek letter eta) — the fraction of electrical power that ends up as useful propeller shaft power, across the ESC, motor and prop.

How to read it. Higher is better; more of your battery becomes thrust.

Watch out. Efficiency peaks at a partial throttle, not at full throttle, so the most efficient cruise is rarely wide-open.

Related: per-rotor η · g / W

Grams per watt (g / W)

Grams of thrust produced per watt of electrical power — the single best efficiency yardstick for hover.

How to read it. Higher is better; you get more lift for the same battery drain. A reasonable hover figure is roughly 5–10 g/W for an efficient multirotor.

Watch out. g/W falls as throttle climbs, so a number quoted at hover will not hold at full throttle.

Related: System η

Pack Current

The total current drawn from the battery at this point, summed across all rotors.

How to read it. Lower current for the same flight is gentler on the pack. This is the number to compare against your battery's C-rating limit.

Watch out. Peak current at full throttle can be far above the average — size the pack for the peak, not the cruise.

Related: Pack · Endurance

Endurance

Estimated flight time remaining at this operating point, shown as mm:ss — the time you could hold this exact throttle for the whole flight.

How to read it. Higher is longer flight. It is the time you could hold this exact thrust — a hover or a station hold — not this exact throttle. Holding thrust means holding power, so as the pack sags the throttle and the current both rise to keep the same thrust. The estimate therefore follows the pack's energy, not its charge, and it includes the pack's own resistive loss. Below it sits a second figure, to 80% discharge: the same flight time stopped at a 20% reserve. That reserve is a rule of thumb for LiPo longevity, not a limit the solver enforces, so both figures are shown and neither is hidden inside the other.

Watch out. A real mission with climbs and manoeuvres will be shorter than either figure. The headline figure runs the pack flat, which you should not do in practice — plan against the 80% discharge figure. Note also that a flight at fixed throttle rather than fixed thrust lasts longer, because the thrust and the current both fall as the pack sags; constant-thrust is the conservative of the two, and a real flight sits between them.

Related: Pack Current · State of charge

Max magnet temp

The hottest motor-magnet temperature across all rotors at this point.

How to read it. Lower is safer; magnets lose strength as they heat and are permanently weakened above about 120 °C.

Watch out. This is a steady-state estimate — a long full-throttle climb can push the real magnet hotter than a brief burst, so check it at your worst-case sustained throttle.

Related: Magnet (thermal) · Irreversible magnet warning

Total vertical

The whole vehicle's vertical (weight-supporting) force — every rotor's Vert force summed, counting each rotor in a group. This tile appears only when a flight condition (a tilt angle, or a climb/descent speed) is set; a plain hover shows the usual tiles unchanged.

How to read it. Compare it to your all-up weight to judge whether the craft can hold or gain altitude.

Watch out. It sums the entire vehicle, so each per-rotor Vert force is only a fraction of this.

Related: Total Thrust · Total horizontal

Total horizontal

The whole vehicle's net forward force in the ground frame — every rotor's Horiz force summed. Appears only when a flight condition is set.

How to read it. Positive means net push to accelerate or to hold speed against drag; negative means the rotors are net retarding.

Watch out. Lift-oriented rotors in forward flight contribute a small negative value — their in-plane rotor drag acts rearward — so a multirotor flying level on lift rotors alone reads slightly negative here. It grows positive as rotors tilt forward or a cruise rotor is added.

Related: Total vertical · Total Thrust

Overview — per-rotor cards

Each rotor gets a card with its own numbers. Expand a card for the Aero and ESC detail (documented in the per-rotor table columns below).

Throttle (per rotor)

The commanded throttle for this rotor, as a percent of full power — an input echoed back so the card is self-contained.

How to read it. Reasonable hover throttle is well below 100%.

Watch out. In a sweep this changes per grid point, so read it alongside the other numbers on the same card.

Current (per rotor)

The current this single rotor's motor draws.

How to read it. Lower for the same thrust is more efficient and cooler-running.

Watch out. This is per-rotor — read Pack Current before comparing against the battery's limit.

RPM (per rotor)

How fast this rotor spins, in revolutions per minute.

How to read it. Higher RPM generally means more thrust from the same prop, but also more current, heat and noise.

Watch out. Pushing RPM until the blade tips approach the speed of sound (high Mach tip) causes a sharp efficiency loss.

Motor V (per rotor)

The voltage actually reaching the motor after the ESC. With Kv it sets the no-load RPM.

How to read it. Closer to pack voltage means a lower-loss ESC.

Watch out. This sits below the pack voltage by the ESC's voltage drop (ΔV) — a big gap means a lossy ESC or thin motor wires.

Thrust (per rotor)

The lift this single rotor produces.

How to read it. Higher is more lift, in your chosen thrust unit.

Watch out. This is per-rotor; the Total Thrust KPI is the sum you compare to all-up weight.

H-force (per rotor)

The in-plane force on this rotor's disk — the sideways (edgewise) push that appears when air flows across the disk instead of straight through it, as in fast forward flight or a steeply tilted rotor. These force rows appear only when a flight condition is set.

How to read it. It is zero when there is no crosswise airflow and grows with edgewise speed. It is reported in the rotor's own frame.

Watch out. The Vert force and Horiz force rows resolve thrust and this force into up / forward directions.

Vert force (per rotor)

The part of this rotor's force that acts straight up against gravity, in the ground frame — thrust and the in-plane force resolved through the rotor's tilt.

How to read it. Higher means more weight support.

Watch out. At a small tilt almost none of the thrust is vertical — it is nearly all propulsive; at a 90° lifting pose all of it supports weight, so read it together with Horiz force.

Horiz force (per rotor)

The forward component of this rotor's force in the ground frame — thrust and the in-plane force resolved through the rotor's tilt.

How to read it. Positive pushes the craft forward; negative retards it.

Watch out. A purely lifting rotor in forward flight reads negative — its thrust is all vertical, so the only horizontal contribution is the rearward in-plane rotor drag. A forward-tilted or cruise rotor reads positive.

Torque (per rotor)

The twisting force the motor applies to the propeller shaft, in newton-metres. It rises with throttle and prop size.

How to read it. It is what the motor's current ultimately produces.

Watch out. High torque at low RPM is the hardest regime for a motor thermally — pair it with the magnet temperature.

Mech P (per rotor)

Mechanical (shaft) power — the power actually delivered to the propeller, which is torque times rotational speed.

How to read it. It is always less than the electrical power by the motor's losses.

Watch out. The ratio of Mech P to Elec P on the same card is the motor-plus-ESC efficiency.

Elec P (per rotor)

Electrical power drawn by this rotor's motor — voltage times current at the motor terminals.

How to read it. Lower for the same thrust is more efficient.

Watch out. The difference between Elec P and Mech P is the heat dumped in the windings, which drives the winding and magnet temperatures.

η (per rotor)

This rotor's efficiency (η, eta) — the fraction of its electrical power that becomes useful shaft power.

How to read it. Higher is better.

Watch out. It peaks at partial throttle; the System η KPI rolls all rotors together.

Grams per watt (g / W, per rotor)

Grams of thrust per watt for this single rotor — its hover-efficiency yardstick.

How to read it. Higher is better.

Watch out. It falls as throttle rises, so a value read at hover overstates efficiency at full throttle.

Pe (per rotor)

advanced Propeller efficiency (Pe) — how well the propeller alone converts shaft power into useful thrust-times-airspeed, separate from the motor and ESC. Advanced — most users can leave this to the experts.

How to read it. Higher is better.

Watch out. At static (hover, zero airspeed) Pe is near zero by definition because there is no forward speed — it only becomes meaningful in forward flight.

Related: Advance ratio (J)

Magnet (per rotor)

This motor's magnet temperature at this point.

How to read it. Lower is safer; above about 120 °C magnets are permanently weakened.

Watch out. A card showing red here means this specific rotor is the thermal bottleneck — see the Thermal tab and the magnet warning.

Powertrain — the power-flow diagram

The Powertrain tab opens with a left-to-right diagram: Pack → −ESC loss → −Motor loss → Shaft, with the percentage of pack power at each step. It is the clearest way to see where your watts go on the way to thrust.

Pack

The starting point of the power-flow diagram: the total electrical power leaving the battery. Everything downstream is this number minus losses.

How to read it. It equals Total Power — the diagram simply shows where each watt goes.

Watch out. Pack power is electrical, not mechanical — the useful work is the Shaft segment at the far end.

ESC loss

Power burnt as heat inside the electronic speed controller — switching and conduction in the MOSFETs, the body-diode freewheel, the PCB and connectors, and the carrier-ripple loss the switching waveform drives — as a percent of pack power.

How to read it. Lower is better. A few percent is normal.

Watch out. Motor-lead resistance is not counted here: it is part of the motor's phase resistance and appears under Motor loss. A large slice points to an undersized ESC or a high switching frequency — and this heat has to go somewhere, so it is also an ESC-cooling problem.

Related: P loss · η_esc · ΔV

Motor loss

Power lost in the motor itself — copper (resistive) and iron (magnetic) losses — as a percent of pack power.

How to read it. Lower is better.

Watch out. This is the heat that raises the winding and magnet temperatures, so a large motor loss and a high magnet temperature go hand in hand.

Shaft

The end of the diagram: the mechanical power that actually reaches the propellers after ESC and motor losses.

How to read it. Higher (a larger share of pack power) means a more efficient powertrain.

Watch out. Shaft power is not thrust — a propeller still has its own efficiency (Pe) turning shaft power into useful lift.

System g/W

Grams of thrust per watt for the whole craft — total thrust divided by total electrical power — restated in the summary row beneath the power-flow diagram.

How to read it. Higher is better. It is the same quantity as the Overview tab's g / W tile, shown here beside the flow so you can read efficiency and where the watts went together.

Watch out. This is a system figure, not a propeller one. It is not propeller efficiency (Pe) — Pe is per-rotor, dimensionless, never above 1, and near zero at static, whereas system g/W sits around 5–10 at hover.

Powertrain — the per-rotor table

A wide table with one row per rotor, grouped into Aerodynamic, Electrical and ESC columns. The aerodynamic coefficients only make sense alongside the advance ratio, so read J first.

J

advanced Advance ratio (J) — how far the propeller travels forward in one revolution relative to its diameter, a dimensionless measure of how loaded the prop is.

How to read it. It is 0 at static (hover) and climbs with airspeed.

Watch out. Most propeller coefficients (Ct, Cp) only make sense alongside J, so read this column first.

Related: Advance ratio (J)

Ct

advanced Thrust coefficient (Ct) — the propeller's thrust normalised by air density, RPM and diameter, so different props compare on equal terms.

How to read it. Higher Ct means more thrust per rev.

Watch out. Ct drops as J rises (forward speed), so compare two props at the same J, not the same RPM.

Cp

advanced Power coefficient (Cp) — the shaft power the propeller absorbs, normalised the same way as Ct.

How to read it. Lower Cp for the same Ct means a more efficient prop.

Watch out. Cp is what loads the motor; a prop with high Cp will pull more current and run the motor hotter at the same RPM.

Pe (column)

advanced Propeller efficiency (Pe) in the per-rotor table — useful thrust power out divided by shaft power in, for the prop alone.

How to read it. Higher is better.

Watch out. It is near zero at static and only meaningful in forward flight; do not read a hover Pe as a verdict on the prop.

Mach tip

advanced The speed of the blade tips as a fraction of the speed of sound (Mach 1).

How to read it. Lower is safer and quieter.

Watch out. Above roughly Mach 0.7–0.8 the tips hit compressibility and efficiency falls off sharply — a high Mach tip is the usual reason a fast-spinning small prop is loud and inefficient.

Related: frac_above_Mdd · Compressibility warning

Reyn

advanced Blade Reynolds number — how strongly the air's inertia beats its viscosity over the blade.

How to read it. It is computed from the blade's mean chord at the speed the blade sees three-quarters of the way out to the tip. Higher means the aerofoil behaves closer to its published high-Reynolds data; a large slow prop and a small fast one can differ by an order of magnitude.

Watch out. Below roughly 50,000 the sections lose lift and gain drag sharply, so a small prop at low RPM is genuinely less efficient than its shape suggests.

Related: Mach tip · Pe

RPM (column)

Propeller rotational speed in the table view.

How to read it. Higher RPM gives more thrust from the same prop but more current, heat and noise.

Watch out. Read it together with Mach tip.

Thrust (column)

Per-rotor thrust in the table view.

How to read it. Higher is more lift, in your chosen thrust unit.

Watch out. This is one rotor's contribution — the Total Thrust KPI is the sum you compare to weight.

Motor V (column)

Voltage at the motor terminals (after the ESC) in the table view.

How to read it. With Kv it sets the no-load RPM.

Watch out. It sits below pack voltage by the ESC drop (ΔV).

Current (column)

Motor (phase-side) current for this rotor in the table view.

How to read it. Lower for the same thrust is more efficient and cooler.

Watch out. Motor current and the battery Bus A differ — they are not the same number.

Bus A

advanced Bus current — the current drawn from the battery for this rotor, on the DC pack side of the ESC. This is what counts against the pack's C-rating.

How to read it. Lower is gentler on the pack.

Watch out. Bus current is lower than the motor phase current on a six-step/PWM ESC; do not confuse the two when checking your battery limit.

Shaft P

Shaft (mechanical) power delivered to the propeller for this rotor.

How to read it. It is torque times speed, and always less than electrical power.

Watch out. Shaft power is not thrust — the propeller's own efficiency still stands between shaft power and useful lift.

Elec P · η · g/W

A combined table cell: electrical power into this rotor, its efficiency (η), and its grams-per-watt.

How to read it. Lower Elec P with higher η and g/W is the efficient corner.

Watch out. η peaks at partial throttle and g/W falls as throttle rises — read all three together rather than chasing any one.

η (column)

Per-rotor efficiency (η, eta) in the table view — useful shaft power out over electrical power in.

How to read it. Higher is better.

Watch out. It is a snapshot at this operating point and peaks at partial throttle.

Grams per watt (g/W) column

Grams of thrust per watt for this rotor in the table view.

How to read it. Higher is better.

Watch out. It falls steeply with throttle, so compare props and motors at the same throttle (or same thrust), never full-power versus hover.

Bus wire loss

advanced Heat burnt in the shared battery-to-ESC run, in watts — the single pair of leads and connectors every rotor draws through.

How to read it. Lower is better. It is the whole pack current squared times that resistance, so it grows with the square of total draw: doubling the rotor count at the same per-rotor current quadruples it.

Watch out. This is harness heat, not ESC heat — it is separate from each rotor's P loss. It is also the one loss you can cut with thicker or shorter leads rather than better components.

Bus wire voltage drop

advanced Volts lost in the shared battery-to-ESC run before the power reaches any ESC — the total pack current times that wire's resistance.

How to read it. Lower is better. Every rotor sees the reduced voltage, so this drop costs RPM and thrust across the whole aircraft at once.

Watch out. It is not the per-rotor ESC ΔV; that is a separate drop further downstream, and the two add.

ΔV

advanced ESC voltage drop (ΔV, delta-V) — the series drop across the ESC's resistance at this rotor's current, the amount of pack voltage that never reaches the motor terminals.

How to read it. Lower is better.

Watch out. ΔV is not the ESC loss. It is one series term the solve applies to the motor voltage; the ESC's dissipation (P loss) also includes switching, freewheeling, PCB and ripple losses. The two move together but are not each other.

P loss

advanced ESC power loss for this rotor, in watts — the same four terms the solver bills on the bus: inverter switching and conduction, PCB and connector resistance, carrier ripple, and body-diode freewheeling.

How to read it. Lower is better.

Watch out. It is not the ΔV drop times the current, and it excludes motor-lead resistance (that is motor-side). This heat must be cooled; a high P loss is both an efficiency hit and an ESC-thermal concern.

V → motor

advanced Voltage delivered to the motor after the ESC drop — the same quantity as Motor V, shown in the ESC group.

How to read it. Closer to pack voltage is a lower-loss ESC.

Watch out. Compare it to pack voltage; the difference is ΔV, your ESC + wire loss.

η_esc

advanced ESC efficiency (η_esc) — the fraction of DC-link power (pack voltage × this rotor's current) the ESC passes through instead of burning as heat, i.e. 1 − P loss ÷ (pack V × current).

How to read it. Higher is better; a good ESC is well into the high-90s percent.

Watch out. It is defined at the DC-link node, so it does not collapse at part throttle the way a duty-scaled figure would. A low η_esc at high current usually means the ESC is undersized or running hot.

Battery

The Battery tab summarises the pack and shows per-cell heatmaps so you can spot an uneven or hot cell.

Pack (battery summary)

The battery pack summary at this point: pack voltage, current, draw, C-rate, configuration, internal resistance and endurance.

How to read it. Lower current and C-rate for the same flight are gentler on the pack.

Watch out. A C-rate near the battery's rated limit means it is working hard — expect more sag and heat than the headline capacity suggests.

Related: C-rating · Endurance

SOC (per cell)

Per-cell state of charge (SOC) — how full each cell is, as a percent, laid out as a heatmap across the pack.

How to read it. You want the cells even; a cold or weak cell that reads low is the one that ends the flight.

Watch out. In a steady-state run SOC is a single instant, not a trajectory — use a dynamic run to watch it drain over a mission.

Related: State of charge

Core temp (per cell)

Per-cell core temperature (T_core) — the internal temperature of each cell, the hottest part.

How to read it. Lower is safer.

Watch out. The core is hotter than the surface you can touch, so judge thermal safety on the core, not the case.

Surface temp (per cell)

Per-cell case (surface) temperature (T_case) — the outside skin of each cell, what a probe would read.

How to read it. Lower is safer.

Watch out. The case lags and reads cooler than the core inside, so a comfortable surface temperature can hide a hot core.

Resistance (per cell)

advanced Per-cell internal resistance (R_cell) — how much each cell resists current flow.

How to read it. Lower is better; resistance causes voltage sag and resistive heating.

Watch out. A cell reading higher resistance than its neighbours is aging or cold — it is the pack's weak link.

Heat (per cell)

advanced Per-cell heat dissipation (P_cell) — the power each cell turns into heat under load, in watts.

How to read it. Lower is better.

Watch out. Heat concentrates in high-resistance or high-current cells; an uneven heat map points to the cell that thermally limits the pack first.

Entropic (per cell)

advanced Per-cell reversible (entropic) heat (P_cell_entropic) — heat a cell releases or absorbs from its own internal chemistry as it charges or discharges, on top of ordinary resistive heating.

How to read it. Positive means the cell is releasing heat; negative means the cell is absorbing heat rather than generating it. The effect is strongest near a full or empty charge and fades to almost nothing around mid-charge.

Watch out. This is a signed (diverging) heatmap, so a red cell and a blue cell can both be normal — read the sign, not just the color intensity, and pair it with Heat (Joule heating) for the cell's total.

Packs

advanced One row per pack in a multi-pack battery, showing how much current each pack actually delivered and the power it supplied at its terminals. A dynamic run adds each pack's state of charge and its hottest cell. The section appears only on a run that used a Multi-pack battery.

How to read it. Packs wired in parallel do not share equally. The branch with the lower total resistance — its own internal resistance plus its branch wire — or the higher state of charge carries more of the load, so it drains faster and runs hotter. Compare the rows against each other rather than against an absolute figure: an even split is a healthy arrangement, a lopsided one means a pack is doing extra work.

Watch out. A negative current means that pack is being charged by its neighbours instead of supplying the aircraft. The row is flagged and a cross-charge warning is listed underneath. It happens when parallel branches start at different charge levels or different nominal voltages, and it is a real hazard, not a display artifact — re-check the pack charges and the voltage match before flying that arrangement.

Related: Pack · Pack Current · SOC (per cell)

Thermal

The Thermal tab has a per-rotor motor table and a battery section, plus convergence.

Winding

The motor winding (copper) temperature — the hottest electrical part of the motor.

How to read it. Lower is safer; the solver caps this at 155 °C.

Watch out. Windings heat fastest under high current at low RPM, so a heavy prop at part throttle can cook them even when thrust looks modest.

Magnet (thermal)

The motor magnet temperature in the thermal table.

How to read it. Lower is safer; above about 120 °C magnets are permanently weakened.

Watch out. The magnet lags the windings but holds heat longer — a long climb matters more than a short burst. See the magnet warning.

Heat

advanced The heat the motor generates at this point — the loss power that drives the temperatures upward.

How to read it. Lower is better.

Watch out. Reducing heat (lower current, better-matched prop) is how you bring the temperatures down.

Thermal R

advanced Thermal resistance (R_th) — how strongly the motor resists shedding its heat to the air, in kelvin per watt.

How to read it. Lower is better; heat escapes more easily.

Watch out. R_th depends on your cooling setup — adding airflow or a cowling lowers it and directly cools the motor.

Cooling air

advanced The cooling-air speed the solver used over the motor — from airframe airspeed, the propeller slipstream, or your custom setting.

How to read it. Higher airflow cools better.

Watch out. In a static hover there is little or no cooling air, so motors run hottest at zero airspeed despite full throttle.

Conv

advanced Whether the thermal solver converged for this rotor — that is, whether the temperatures settled to a steady answer.

How to read it. You want this to read converged.

Watch out. A not-converged thermal result means the temperatures are an estimate the solver could not pin down; treat them with caution and check Diagnostics.

Diagnostics

The Diagnostics tab is where you confirm the result is trustworthy: convergence, per-rotor solver quality, safety flags, and the solver internals.

System convergence

Whether the whole simulation reached a self-consistent steady answer across the powertrain.

How to read it. You want it converged; a converged result is trustworthy.

Watch out. If it did not converge, the headline numbers are the solver's best unsettled estimate — inspect the per-rotor solver quality below before relying on them.

Converged fraction (frac_converged)

advanced The fraction of the propeller's blade stations whose inner aerodynamic loop converged, from 0 to 1.

How to read it. You want 1.0 — every station solved.

Watch out. A value below 1 means some blade sections did not settle (often heavily loaded or stalled tips), so that rotor's thrust and power are less reliable — see the convergence warning.

Compressibility flag (compressibility)

advanced A flag that the propeller blade tips are running fast enough for air-compressibility effects to matter.

How to read it. off is the comfortable case.

Watch out. When this is on, the prop's thrust and efficiency suffer and the model is near its limits — slow the prop down (lower RPM or smaller diameter). See the compressibility warning.

Fraction above Mdd (frac_above_Mdd)

advanced The fraction of blade stations running above the drag-divergence Mach number (M_dd) — the speed at which compressibility drag rises sharply.

How to read it. Lower is better; 0 is ideal.

Watch out. A non-zero value means part of the blade is paying a steep compressibility penalty; reduce tip speed to recover efficiency.

Validation envelope

Whether this rotor's operating point and propeller fall inside the range the published accuracy figures were measured over: 17 two-bladed APC Thin-Electric propellers, 12–21 in diameter, pitch/diameter 0.44–0.83, advance ratio J ≤ 0.95, tip Mach ≤ 0.43, ISA sea level. Anything outside that range is an extrapolation, and this is where the result says so.

How to read it.

The second half of the reading — partial · tip Mach, outside · pitch/diameter — names which dimension takes the run out: advance ratio, tip Mach, pitch/diameter, thrust coefficient, diameter, or blade count.

Watch out. partial is not a warning. A careful answer at the edge of the evidence is usually better than a confident one beyond it, and a propeller being outside the measured diameter range says nothing about whether the physics is right — only that nobody has measured that propeller. Treat it as a statement about the evidence, not about the run. If the field is missing entirely, the run predates this readout or its envelope could not be established.

Related: Solver metadata · Mach tip

Safety flags

A roll-up of the active warnings at this operating point — magnet over-temperature, convergence shortfalls, compressibility, pack thermal.

How to read it. Fewer (ideally none) is better.

Watch out. A flag here is the headline; click through to the Warnings explained page to see the threshold it tripped and what to do.

Solver metadata

advanced The solver internals behind this run — solver name, thermal tolerances, iteration caps and the safety thresholds the result was computed against.

How to read it. It is reference detail, not a value to optimise.

Watch out. The magnet (120 °C) and pack-thermal (60 °C) thresholds listed here are the same limits the warnings use, so they explain why a flag tripped.

Header controls

The controls along the top of every results page.

Thrust units

Switches the unit every thrust number on the page is shown in — newtons (N), pounds-force (lbf), grams-force (gf) or kilograms-force (kgf). It only changes the display, never the physics.

Watch out. Grams-force and kilograms-force are weight-equivalent units pilots often use, so pick the one you compare against your craft's weight.

Re-open exact inputs

Loads the exact inputs of this finished run back into the New Simulation form so you can tweak and re-run.

Watch out. It never changes this saved run — running again creates a new record, so the original stays for comparison.

Copy link

Under Share ▾, creates a public link to these results and copies it to your clipboard. ThrustLab asks you to confirm first, because the link is public — anyone you send it to can open the result without an account or access to your project.

Watch out. Only share the link with people you intend to; the engineering-use disclaimer applies to everyone who opens it.

Export results (JSON)

advanced Downloads the full result for this run as a JSON file — every field, not just what is on screen.

Watch out. The keys are the raw solver field names (which can differ from the friendly labels here), so keep this page open as a legend.

Export powertrain (FMI 3.0)

advanced Under Share ▾, builds this run's powertrain into an FMI 3.0 Co-Simulation FMU — the interchange format Simulink, Dymola, OpenModelica and most system-simulation tools import. Use it to fly your powertrain inside a vehicle, mission or controller model without rebuilding it there.

ThrustLab builds the file by solving your configuration across a grid of throttle, axial inflow, edgewise inflow and state-of-charge points for each rotor, then packages those tables with a generic interpolator. Edgewise inflow is the forward-flight crosswind over the rotor disc. This includes coaxial stacks and heterogeneous rotor sets. Choosing it opens a new tab for that export, which is where the progress, the cancel control and the download live; the results page itself is free to use, or close, while the build runs. State of charge is integrated from the interpolated bus current as your model steps, so a mission drains the pack the way the run would.

Watch out. The FMU reproduces the powertrain it was exported from and answers for no other hardware. It is accurate only inside the sampled range. Outside that range, or at operating points the solver could not answer such as deep windmilling, every output clamps to the nearest sampled edge and the affected rotor's rotor_in_envelope flag goes false. Treat a false flag as "this number was not measured" rather than a reading. Setting air_density_kg_m3 away from the density the run used also clears the envelope flag because density is not one of the sampled axes. The run must be a completed single-point simulation of one powertrain. Sweeps and dynamic missions cannot be described by a single FMU yet. Multi-pack batteries are also unsupported.

Export progress

advanced The export tab's progress bar. It is weighted by expected work rather than by number of points, so it advances at roughly the rate the job finishes — sampling the battery pack takes seconds, a motor surface tens of seconds, and each rotor's aerodynamic table minutes. Below the bar: the part being sampled now, the time elapsed, and a rough estimate of the time left.

The estimate reads estimating… until enough of the job has been measured to say anything, then rounds to whole minutes. The tab is bookmarkable — its address carries the job, so reloading it rejoins the same export rather than starting a second one, and the address can be opened later from any tab in the same browser.

Watch out. The estimate is deliberately coarse; treat it as a guide, not a countdown. Closing the tab does not stop the export — it finishes on our servers and you get a notification when the file is ready.

Cancel export

advanced Stops the export. Cancelling is cooperative: the build stops at the next point in its sampling where it can stop cleanly, which can take a few seconds, and the job then ends as cancelled with no file.

Watch out. There is no resume — starting again re-samples from the beginning. A rotor aerodynamic table built earlier is reused, so a second attempt on the same hardware is usually much faster than the first.

Download .fmu

advanced Downloads the finished FMU. It downloads by itself the moment the build completes; the button is there for a download you dismissed, or a browser that blocked it.

Watch out. The file expires 24 hours after the export completes. After that the tab reports it expired and you run the export again. The download is yours alone — the address is not a shareable link to the file.

Solver version

advanced Which version of the simulation solver produced this result. Click it to open that version's validation report — the measured accuracy, the envelope those figures were established over, and the known limitations of that release. Versions released before the validation reports existed link to the solver changelog instead.

Watch out. Results from different solver versions are not always directly comparable — check two old runs share a version before trusting small differences.

MY CUSTOM

Marks a result that used at least one component you defined — a propeller, motor or battery pack you created rather than picked from the ThrustLab catalogue.

It is there because the accuracy figures in the current validation report were measured against catalogue components, whose geometry ThrustLab controls. Nothing was measured behind a component you defined, so the report's error bars do not extend to this result. Read it as: the physics model still applies, the published accuracy figures do not.

Watch out. One custom part is enough. A run that mixes catalogue and custom components is still marked, because the unmeasured part feeds every number on the page.

Sweep results — Plots & Data

A sweep runs many operating points at once and adds two tabs.

Plots

The Plots tab (sweep runs only) shows the swept results as curves and surfaces — one card per metric — so you can see how thrust, power and efficiency change across the swept range.

Watch out. A sweep is many operating points at once; pick the axes deliberately so the curve answers the question you care about.

Plot axes

Choose which swept variable goes on the X axis and which result goes on the Y axis of each plot card.

How to read it. Picking the right pair (e.g. throttle on X, g/W on Y) is what turns a sweep into an answer.

Watch out. With two or more swept axes the plot shows one slice — change the axis selection to explore the others.

Point inspection

Hover or click a point on a sweep plot to see the full set of numbers for that exact grid point — the same detail you would get from a single-point run.

Watch out. A smooth-looking curve can hide a single non-converged point; inspect any point that looks off.

Converged

Whether the solver settled on a self-consistent answer at that one grid point — electrically and thermally. It appears as a column in the Data tab, alongside the system totals.

How to read it. You want every point converged. A grid point that did not converge is greyed in the table and drawn as a muted cross on the plots, so you can see exactly which corners of the sweep the solver could not solve.

Watch out. A non-converged point is excluded from the sweep's best-thrust summary and its single-point tabs are blocked — its numbers are not a real operating point, so treat the swept trend as ending where the converged points end. Non-convergence clusters at extremes: very small motors at full throttle, very high ambient temperatures, and props well outside a motor's range.

Data

The Data tab (sweep runs only) lists every grid point in a paginated, filterable table — the raw numbers behind the plots.

Watch out. A large multi-axis sweep can run to thousands of rows; filter to the slice you care about rather than scrolling.

How to read a sweep

A sweep answers "how does this change across a range" instead of at one point. Each axis you sweep (throttle, airspeed, a component) adds a dimension; the result is a grid of points.

How to read it. Use the Plots tab to see the trend and the Data tab to find the exact best point. You can compare selected runs side by side to overlay curves.

Watch out. Every extra swept axis multiplies the grid points, so a two- or three-axis sweep grows fast — keep an eye on the grid-point count when you set it up.

Dynamic results — Time-Series & Events

A dynamic (time-domain) run plays a schedule over time and adds two tabs plus a scrubber.

Time-Series

The Time-Series tab (dynamic runs only) plots how each quantity — thrust, current, temperatures, state of charge — changes over the course of the flight rather than at a single instant.

Watch out. The interesting moments are the peaks and the end of the flight, not the average; scrub to them.

Scrubber

The transport bar that lets you scrub or play back the flight in time — drag the playhead to read every result at that instant, or press play to watch it evolve.

Watch out. The headline KPIs follow the playhead, so make sure you know which moment you are looking at before comparing numbers.

Inflow @ t

On the Overview tab of a dynamic run, one diagram per rotor shows how it met the air at the scrubbed instant: the disc drawn at its scheduled tilt, the freestream arrow built from the run's airspeed and vertical speed, and the dashed axial (green) / edgewise (red) arrows — the exact decomposition the solver integrated at that time. Press play on the scrubber to animate it through the flight, e.g. to watch a VTOL transition tilt forward as airspeed builds.

The Live-@-t KPI strip's Airspeed and V. speed tiles read the same scheduled lanes, and per-rotor Tilt, Axial inflow, and Edgewise inflow are plottable channels in the Time-Series tab. Runs completed before inflow lanes shipped don't carry them, so the card is hidden there.

Throttle timeline

Shows the commanded throttle for each rotor across the whole flight — the schedule you set, played back over time.

Watch out. Per-rotor throttles can differ in a mixed configuration, so read the timeline per rotor, not as one global value.

Events

The Events tab (dynamic runs only) lists discrete moments during the flight — thermal limits reached, convergence drops, the battery hitting a cutoff — in time order.

How to read it. Fewer (and later) events are better.

Watch out. Click an event to jump the scrubber to that instant and see exactly what the powertrain was doing when it tripped.

Export full series (CSV)

advanced Downloads the full-resolution time-series of a dynamic run as a CSV — every sample of every channel — for your own analysis.

Watch out. The full series can be large; there is also a lighter "display series" export if you only need the points shown on screen.

How to read a time-domain run

A dynamic run answers "how long / how hot over the mission", a different question from a single steady point.

How to read it. Use the scrubber to move through time. The flight ends either at a fixed duration or when the battery is depleted (a cutoff); watch the state-of-charge and cell-voltage trajectories approach their cutoffs.

Watch out. A dynamic result is a trajectory — read the peaks and the endpoint, not a single average, and remember the temperatures build over time, so the worst moment is usually late in a sustained climb.

Related: State of charge