Preliminary Evaluation of Thrust Loss in Commercial Aircraft Engine due to Airborne Collision with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

Abstract

This paper is devoted to investigating the influence of UAVs airborne collision with civil aircraft engine on the operation safety of commercial aircraft. The damage levels of the civil aircraft fan blades and compressor blades during the UAVs airborne collision are both evaluated based on the Finite Element Method (FEM) simulation. Besides, the percentage of the engine thrust loss can be estimated by the reduction of pressure ratio throughout the engine using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation. In our study, it is found that UAVs ingestion at approach flight phase has the highest UAVs debris weight of 80g which can cause most severe damage to aircraft Inlet Guide Vane (IGV) Low Pressure Compressor (LPC) blades. This thrust loss can reach up to 75% when the damage of High Pressure Compressor (HPC) blades is included in the analysis. More simulations are will be carefully carried out to check the reliability of this conclusion, in which the influence of secondary level of damage especially IGV blades debris impact on HPC blades are considered.

Crash Area Estimation for Ground Risk of Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Due to Propulsion System Failures.

“…In order to enable full drone operation in urban or near aerodrome airspace, the associated risk to its operation has to be investigated carefully. A few studies have investigated the risks of a drone operation to the people and vehicles on the ground in urban low altitude airspace [4][5][6][7] and damage severity due to drone intrusion into aerodrome airspace [8][9][10]. In addition, some studies have developed a drone risk-based model assessment for path-planning by considering different third-party risks scenario [11,12].…”

Numerical Investigation of Drone Strikes with Various Aircraft Targets

“…On the basis of their numerical results they conclude, that a drone strike produces more damage than a bird strike for the same kinetic energy. Further authors like Song and Schroeder [8][9][10][11], Man et al [12], Schwab [13], Lyons et al [14], Yu et al [15], Hou et al [16] as well as Liu et al [17] investigated the impact of drones with engines. Together, these studies show that the ingestion of a drone will lead to severe damage within the ingestion, especially in the area of the fan.…”

Severity assessment of aircraft engine fan blades under airborne collision of unmanned aerial vehicles comparable to bird strike certification standards

“…30 A study by Liu et al 31 revealed that the drone weight of 750 g could cause large deformation to engine fan blades. A study of the impact of the large drone category on an aircraft engine by Hasrizam et al 32 has reported the damage caused to the engine’s low-pressure compressor (LPC) and high-pressure compressor (HPC) may lead to thrust loss of up to 75%. Nevertheless, to the authors’ knowledge, no comprehensive damage severity assessment tool has been proposed to evaluate the potential risk level of drone intrusion into airport airspace and to air traffic safety.…”