Development and severity analysis of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) collision with covered linkway

• Main Author: Ng, Nathaniel Jingwei
• Other Authors: Low Kin Huat
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
• Subjects: Engineering::Aeronautical engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/167470
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This study investigates the collision severity of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) with a covered linkway using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) on the ABAQUS software package. The study was conducted in two phases. Phase 1 explores three methods that can be used to model the honeycomb sandwich panel used as the roofing of the linkway. The best model was then used for modelling the linkway panel in the next phase of the study. In Phase 2, the DJI Phantom 3 UAV was crashed in a head-on configuration into the linkway panel at various velocities ranging from 10m/s to 100m/s. A rigid impactor of similar size and weight to the UAV was also crashed into the linkway panel for the same range of velocities to understand if their impact dynamics were comparable. The maximum contact force and maximum displacement were then obtained and compared. It was observed that no penetration occurred for all impact velocities. A higher impact speed resulted in higher maximum contact force and displacement for both rigid impactor and UAV cases. The rigid impactor tends to overpredict the maximum contact force compared to the UAV. However, the maximum displacement for both rigid impactor and UAV were comparable for impact speeds up to 70m/s.