BIRD AND DRONE IMPACT DAMAGE PROGNOSIS OF ON-DEMAND AIR MOBILITY SERVICE AIRCRAFT ENGINE

The development of advanced on-demand air mobility services, also referred to as air taxis, is on the rise to help divert pressure from existing transportation modes. Due to more frequent take offs and landings, air taxis’ close encounter with birds and drones drastically increases within the latter’s flight or operating altitudes. In this study, finite element methods and analysis are used to investigate damage due to direct and oblique impact from a bird and drone on the engine of a modern air taxi following existing certification standards. A bird surrogate modeled using the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method, and a quadcopter drone were used as projectiles. Results from the impacts are analyzed and compared to investigate the post-impact damage of the aircraft engine.