Institutes & CentersterraXcube - Projects - DronEx

DronEx

Testing drones in extreme environmental conditions

Primary aim of this project is to establish a testing facility for drone flight in extreme environmental conditions. These tests will be controlled and reproducible, thanks to the facility terraXcube, where the tests will be performed. Drones will fly in an artificially reproduced scenario of multiple climatic stress factors: wind, heat, rain, snow, high altitude, etc. The obtained information will be useful for the design and development of a new drone generation, more reliable and safe.

Project duration: March 2017 - December 2020
Project status:
Funding:
FESR (EU funding / Project)
Institute: terraXcube

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Background

Environmental conditions have a great influence on aircraft performance. Thrust reduction with altitude and temperature increase is a well-known problem in the aviation industry. For commercial multirotor (UAVs) a systematic approach on performance varying environmental conditions is still an open research field.

Many of the existing applications designed for UAVs (e.g. precision agriculture, delivery of instruments or medical supplies) have not been fully exploited by the market so far. This is due to the lack of existing knowledge about flight under variable weather conditions. A bias in the existing tests has been the non-reproducibility of the same climatic conditions.

The UAV industry has recently started to perform environmental test and provide information to the end users, revealing growing interest in a more systematic approach to quantify performance according to weather conditions. Flight tests in a climate-controlled facility would give potential to improve UAV operations.

In the past automotive facilities were exploited giving potential to perform flight test inside a wide-temperature-controlled area: no standards for UAV testing were defined and activities were limited to the effect of wind and temperature. Pressure influence on rotor and overall UAV performance still remain unexplored due to lacks of dedicated hypobaric infrastructures. Automotive climatic wind tunnels are not suitable for these purposes as not designed for low pressure conditions; hypobaric medical facilities do not provide a wide area for flight tests. In the next few years, dedicated environmental facilities will play a crucial role for UAV industry development.

Goals

The primary aim of project DronEx is to establish an environmental testing facility for the UAV industry.

Several subtopics have been covered by the project activities: aero dynamical effect (change of thrust depending on air pressure and temperature), numerical validation of experimental results and icing phenomena.

The consolidation of South Tyrolean UAV industrial sector is a crucial goal of DronEx: local companies have been involved in the full process of topic identification, knowledge development and knowledge transfer.

Finally yet importantly, our project results will facilitate the development of UAV design and safety while taking into account weather variability influence to improve flight stability and controllability.

Testing Services

Collaborations

Local companies: NOI TechPark, Tech-Transfer Automotive, coordinates a working group of companies and Research entities in the field of UAV. List of local companies involved in the project:

Research:

Politecnico di Torino

Politecnico di Milano

FBK

Scientific Output

Deliverables:

**Scientific dissemination: **

List of peer-reviewed papers and international conferences

**Communication material: **

Kick-off meeting:

Minutes of meeting with companies to collect their requirements
State of the art: review
Testing protocols: two versions of the testing protocols (“preliminay” and “improved”) have been developed.

**Test Sessions: **

**Marketing material: **

Scientific Publications

Conference proceedings article2020

UAS testing in low pressure and temperature conditions

Scanavino M, Avi A, Vilardi A, Guglieri G

The increasing demand of UAS has generated interest in the scientific community to understand how the environmental parameters affect performance of these emerging vehicles. A bias in the existing tests has been the non-reproducibility of the same climatic conditions. Therefore, UAS have not been fully exploited by the marker so far. Standard protocols for UAS testing in unconventional weather conditions have not been investigated from both industry and academic research. Temperature and pressure are environmental parameters that affect the aerodynamics of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). Low Reynolds numbers are common for small scale UAS and have a strongly influence on propeller and vehicle capabilities. In the past years, experimental studies on the effects of low Reynolds numbers have been carried out in wind tunnel facilities in conventional atmospheres (ambient temperature and pressure). Moreover, the complexity of the aerodynamic field results in propeller and full vehicle performance prediction methods with limited accuracy. In this paper an experimental setup inside a climatic and hypobaric laboratory is used to highlight temperature and pressure influence on single propeller and full vehicle performance in static conditions (hover). Test results are discussed and provided to the reader, highlighting the complexities of the measurements when extreme temperature and low pressure are set. The main contribution of this study is a set of experimental data to pave the way for a deep investigation on harsh environmental conditions on UAS propulsion system.

DOI Source

DOI: 10.1109/ICUAS48674.2020.9213969

All Publications

UAS testing in low pressure and temperature conditions
Scanavino M, Avi A, Vilardi A, Guglieri G (2020)
Conference proceedings article

Conference: 2020 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS) | Athens | 1.9.2020 - 4.9.2020

More information: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9213969

https://doi.org/10.1109/ICUAS48674.2020.9213969

https://hdl.handle.net/10863/16931

Project Team

Christian Steurer

Team Member

Marco Cavalli

Team Member

Nicole Spagna

Team Member

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DronEx