Stress and Fatigue Analysis of a Demining UAV

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can be used for tasks that would otherwise risk exposing people to dangerous environments. One such task is the act of demining mine fields. Establishing the correct measures needed to ensure structural integrity in a system exposed to such varying structural loads as a UAV is not trivial and the task of demining mine fields adds to the complexity.
The Machine Design Department at the Royal Institute of Technology is looking for a student interested in taking on the challenge of suggesting a design for a UAV frame with rotor mounts, which is capable of operating as a Demining UAV. An existing Vertol UAV design will be used as a reference implementation to support the analyses done during the Master Thesis.
Important means to reach the goal are:
• A stress analysis
• A fatigue analysis
• A weight optimization analysis
Both the stress and the fatigue analysis should take vibration modes and the exposure to explosions in the proximity of the UAV into account.