Abstract
Unmanned helicopters are trending platforms for quick post-disaster aerial surveying because of their improved safety, reduced operational costs and ability to access hazardous areas. Design enhancements in the existing aerial platforms to accommodate surveying functionality is a commonly practiced approach instead of developing surveying platforms from scratch. Skid elevation to accommodate additional equipment is one of the design enhancements done under this approach. This paper proposes a new hollow structure elevated skid design to address the problem of providing additional space to accommodate disaster surveying equipment (i.e., vision system, airdrop mechanism, extra fuel tank) under the medium-size helicopter. SolidWorks and ANSYS virtual platforms are used for the modelling and simulations of the proposed elevated skid structure, respectively. Static structural Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and Explicit Dynamic Analysis (EDA) are performed for aluminium and fibreglass materials and concluded that proposed structure is within the elastic limit of materials with safety factors within the aerospace range (1.2-1.5). Results for fibreglass material are reported slightly better than aluminium material. Comparative analysis is performed with existing skids and proposed design is capable of achieving desired payload capacity (i.e., 7kg) and space requirements (i.e., 195mm) by almost 160g reduced weight when compared with reference skid. Developed elevated skid will provide additional space for the attachment of equipment related to disaster relief, rescue and surveying.
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