Failure Detection of Composites with Control System Corrective Response in Drone System Applications

Abstract

The paper describes a novel method for the detection of damage in carbon composites as used in drone frames. When damage is detected a further novel corrective response is initiated in the quadcopter flight controller to switch from a four-arm control system to a three-arm control system. This is made possible as a symmetrical frame is utilized, which allows for a balanced weight distribution between both the undamaged quadcopter and the fallback tri-copter layout. The resulting work allows for continued flight where this was not previously possible. Further developing work includes improved flight stability with the aid of an underslung load model. This is beneficial to the quadcopter as a damaged arm attached to the main body by the motor wires behaves as an underslung load. The underslung load works are also transferable in a dual master and slave drone system where the master drone transports a smaller slave drone by a tether, which acts as an underslung load.

UAV Fault Detection Methods, State-of-the-Art

“…The relatively rarely discussed topic of detecting mechanical damage to the drone's frame structure was undertaken by Bowkett et al in [35]. They conducted research on the detection of the loss of one of the quadrotor arms and the possibility of changing the configuration of the flying vehicle from a structure with 4 propellers to a triritor.…”

“…Faults in UAVs are usually divided into two categories: actuator faults and sensor faults. Although there are studies treating, for example, damage to circuit boards [34], drone's frame [35] or the surface of the flying vehicle itself [36], these are not often addressed research problems by scientists. Figure 3 presents a common division into two main groups.…”

Revue Systématique de la Littérature sur le Soutien à la Sécurité des Opérations de Drones

“…La préservation de l'intégrité de l'aéronef constitue 16.16% des articles. Les thèmes sont principalement les systèmes embarqués dont les systèmes de commandes en vol [27], notamment la détection de défaillances [17,21,22,57,89,90,96], la gestion des contingences [110], la conception de systèmes résilients [111,122] et les aides pour l'atterrissage [26,52,86,98,112,116].…”

Trajectory planning of quadrotor using sliding mode control with extended state observer

“…This research paper mainly focuses on trajectory planning using sliding mode observer and proposes a new attitude control architecture. [6][7][8] The dynamic modeling of the quadrotor aircraft is studied by Chen et al 9 The rigid body dynamic equations are used for the modeling of the quadrotor aircraft. However, a small literature is needed to provide practical methods for testing the model parameters.…”

“…This research paper mainly focuses on trajectory planning using sliding mode observer and proposes a new attitude control architecture. 6–8…”