Simulation of airborne collision between a drone and an aircraft nose

The usage of a large number of civil unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has caused potential hazards to the safe operation of manned aircraft. In this paper, a full-size commercial aircraft nose and a typical UAV with the whole level were selected for collision test, by which the verified finite element (FE) models were applied to four representative regions of the nose for collision simulation. A 1,360 g UAV and a 1,800 g bird have collided with the nose respectively under the same conditions and the former caused more serious damage. The kinetic energy of UAV as well as the hardness of its major components plays a critical role in evaluating damage of the nose, and the greater the kinetic energy loss, the more serious the damage of the nose is in general. It was very possible that the battery of UAV would penetrate the skin to enter the inside of nose with high speed and cause explosion and fire. The flying posture of UAV has an effect on the nose damage and no penetration happened to the lower panel of the main windshield under various possible impact postures of UAV with a velocity of 152 m/s. The existing anti-bird strike airworthiness clauses concerning the aircraft nose as CCAR 25.571 are not suitable for the design of nose against UAV strike and are suggested to be improved with extensive research findings in the future, including the operational requirements of UAVs and the design guidelines for a UAV collision mitigation. (C) 2021 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This study conducted collision tests between a full-size commercial aircraft nose and a typical UAV, showing that UAVs pose potential hazards to manned aircraft safety. The kinetic energy and hardness of UAV components play a critical role in evaluating nose damage, with higher kinetic energy leading to more serious damage. It suggests the need for future research to improve airworthiness regulations and design guidelines specifically for UAV collision mitigation.