Collision severity evaluation of quadcopter UAV crash on human head

Abstract

This study focuses on determining the collision severity of a generalised quadcopter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) crash on the human head. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and explicit dynamics simulations on ABAQUS were used to determine the peak impact force. In this study, appropriate dimensions for the modelling of a generalised quadcopter UAV were obtained from dimensional analysis on Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) 2022 list of unmanned aircraft operator permit holders’ UAVs. The generalised UAV quadcopter was created using SolidWorks. Simulations were carried out with three different dimensions for the quadcopter, which were 290x290x200mm, 420x420x200mm, and 558x558x200mm. Two different camera position was also used for the simulation, mounted at the front and mounted at the center. Impact positions were chosen to be frontal impact and top impact. Impact velocity was fixed to 16m/s. The Impact Force Criterion was utilised to obtain the Abbreviated Injury Severity (AIS) for the impact scenarios. The results show that as the quadcopter dimensions increased, the contact forces on the human neck increased. However, when the quadcopter dimensions were smaller than the size of the human head, the contact force was at its highest due to the motors impacting the head directly. Furthermore, when the camera is mounted at the front, the impact force is greater than that mounted at the center. However, it should be noted that the rotation of the motor blades was not included in this study, which would affect the results. Further studies are required to consider the rotation of the motor blades impacting the human head and physical experiment is required to validate the study.