Quantitative Approach and Departure Risk Assessment for Unmanned Aerial Systems

• Main Author: Gobin, Bradley Scott
• Other Authors: Aerospace and Ocean Engineering
• Format: Others
• Published: Virginia Tech 2020
• Subjects: Risk Assessment; Unmanned Aerial Systems; Drones
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10919/100707

The usage of unmanned aerial systems (UAS), also called drones, has grown at an increasing rate, with expectations of the number of unmanned aircraft (UA) to triple between 2019 and 2023 as commercial and government usage of UAS increases as per the Federal Aviation Administration. As the usage of UA increases, the probability of a UA crash resulting in injuries of 3rd parties on the ground also increases. The goal of this research was to create a method and software tool that gives the user an accurate representation of the risk to 3rd parties on the ground associated with a given flight plan. The main area of focus was on large rotorcraft and fixed-wing aircraft that are used by the military and that have the potential to do large amounts of damage if a crash were to occur. How unique types of failures affect the ground area at risk and the UA crash characteristics and how these characteristics affect population on the ground were all considered. With this information, a probability of fatality value is calculated, which helps the user determine if the mission risk is acceptable. The ability to optimize this flight path to find the lowest risk flight path is also possible, based upon user specifications. === Master of Science === Understanding the likelihood of an undesired event occurring is vital for the use of any system in the real world. This is especially true in the case of aircraft, were an undesired event can likely cause loss of life. A new area of aircraft that require additional insight into the failure characteristics are unmanned aerial systems, often referred to as drones. Drones do not have a pilot inside the aircraft, who could correct for any failures that might occur. Due to this potential inability to correct for a failure, a method must be developed to gain a better understanding of the potential failures and risks involved in drone operations. The method developed during this work was turned into a software tool, which allows a mission for a drone to be mapped out and the risk to be determined. Due to the drones being unmanned the risk is taken as the expected number of fatalities to the 3rd party individuals on the ground. This expected number of fatalities is determined by the population density of the area the flight is occurring over, and the crash characteristics for the aircraft. These methods and accompanying assumptions are outlined in the body of this work.