Watch What Happens When A Drone Slams Into An Airplane Wing (sacbee.com) 131
Long-time Slashdot reader Freshly Exhumed writes:
Researchers at the University of Dayton Research Institute [Impact Physics Lab] have shown in a video what can happen when a high-mass, consumer-level drone strikes the wing of an aircraft. They provide visual evidence of the damage a 2.1-pound DJI Phantom 2 videography quadcopter would have upon the wing of a Mooney M20, a small, private aircraft. It is not difficult to extrapolate the effects upon an airliner in a similar situation. "We wanted to help the aviation community and the drone industry understand the dangers that even recreational drones can pose to manned aircraft before a significant event occurs," said Kevin Poormon of UDRI.
The video -- titled "Risk in the Sky?" -- simulates a collision at 238 mph in which the drone tears open the wing's leading edge.
"While the quadcopter broke apart, its energy and mass hung together to create significant damage to the wing," said Kevin Poormon, group leader for impact physics at UDRI.
The video -- titled "Risk in the Sky?" -- simulates a collision at 238 mph in which the drone tears open the wing's leading edge.
"While the quadcopter broke apart, its energy and mass hung together to create significant damage to the wing," said Kevin Poormon, group leader for impact physics at UDRI.
Instead of a wing on a small private aircraft (Score:3)
wouldn't it be better to test a drone crashing into the engines of an F-35, or a commercial airliner? That may be somewhat more relevant.
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Re:Instead of a wing on a small private aircraft (Score:5, Informative)
You don't know what you are writing about. I have worked for 30 years in the aerospace field (specifically testing high performance aircraft). There is a HUGE difference between soft tissue and metal parts and highly-dense batteries. Any turbine engine would be utterly destroyed by a 1-2 lb drone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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You don't know what you are writing about. I have worked for 30 years in the aerospace field (specifically testing high performance aircraft). There is a HUGE difference between soft tissue and metal parts and highly-dense batteries. Any turbine engine would be utterly destroyed by a 1-2 lb drone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
And if you were going to actually do it on purpose, you could remove non-essential weight, and add ball bearings to the payload...
Re:Instead of a wing on a small private aircraft (Score:4, Informative)
Interesting video. Thanks.
It looks like the blade fragments are still retained within the cowl, is that the case in the simulation?
If that is the case, while you would loose an engine that would not be catastrophic but just another engine failure in flight.
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Contained or uncontained failure though?
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There is a HUGE difference between soft tissue
I thought turbines are tested against frozen tissue, not soft tissue.
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Tell that to Sully
Re: No. (Score:2)
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F35 radar is sensitive enough to pick up a small drone and implement countermeasures to prevent a collision or worse
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You mean something other than one of the tiniest private airplanes made, and one that also happens to have wooden wings?
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What's wrong with wooden wings?
This little beauty went like shit off a shovel and could carry two tons of bombs to boot.
http://www.eaa.org/~/media/ima... [eaa.org]
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What's wrong with wooden wings?
This little beauty went like shit off a shovel and could carry two tons of bombs to boot.
Yep, the Mosquito ("Mossy" to the pilots and crews who flew and loved them) was such a notable performer the Nazis even tried to copy it but with only limited success.
Still, there's a huge difference between a drone impacting a very thin aluminum skin over relatively soft wood compared to the much thicker aluminum skin of an airliner laid over structural metal wing framework, especially as the leading edge is one of the strongest, densest, and most rigid areas of the wing.
Also, ~235mph is the top cruising s
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I included commentary on this in a video [youtube.com] I posted almost three weeks ago. The bottom line is that they chose an absolute worst-case scenario, something that has prompted DJI (the maker of the drone used) to demand that the video and findings be withdrawn (copy of the letter [uasweekly.com]).
It seems that this test may have been more about promoting the university than gaining actual scientific evidence (note the prominence of the university's name on the wing under test). This is supported by a comment on the video I pos
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"DJI, the world’s leader in civilian drones and aerial imaging technology, today demanded the University of Dayton Research Institute (UDRI) withdraw a misleading vide
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Are bigger airliners made with stronger materials? I thought with weight considerations, all commercial jetliners (not military aircraft) would be similarly fragile—it's not like larger aircrafts could be made with steel airfoils.
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Are bigger airliners made with stronger materials?
They are both made from aluminum, usually an alloy such as 2024-Aluminum [wikipedia.org] which is stronger than pure aluminum.
But an airliner will have thicker sheeting. A Cessna class plane may use 0.7mm. sheeting. A big airliner will use up to 3mm sheeting on the wing near the fuselage, tapering to about 1mm near the wingtip.
In the future, aircraft skins may be made from syntactic foam [wikipedia.org], which has a higher strength-to-weight ratio, can absorb impacts better, and does not propagate cracks or tears. But the tech isn't ma
Re: Scare mongering (Score:2)
Are Airlines made out of wood? Last time I checked they weren't so extrapolation from a small wooden wing to an airliner is not possible.
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An A340 has a takeoff speed of 180mph. Some larger planes might have a high speed but a lot of smaller planes will have a lower speed (737 is 150mph) and the plane they used has a takeoff speed of 70 mph. Landing speeds are lower than takeoff speeds. The Phantom has a max speed of 56mph.They fired the mass at an empty wing rather than one that was filled with fuel.
It should be abundantly clear as to why the test results really aren't that useful.
Re:Scare mongering (Score:5, Interesting)
The scaling question probably has to do with the construction of the wing, not the net mass of the aircraft. The video shows the drone penetrating the sheet metal covering of the wing; I don't know if that would be more robust on an airliner, but I expect it is. However that leaves the question of the effect on an airliner, which travels at greater speeds, quite open.
The thing about research is a lot of the time what you're looking for isn't answers, you're looking for questions that should be asking, or trying to justify funding for questions you think need addressing.
Now bird strikes have been part of aviation since the beginning, but drone strikes are a new phenomenon. Are they pretty much analogous, or do we need to start thinking about drones differently? What the researchers actually did here was compare the damage done by a simulated bird strike to a drone strike, and found that the nature of the damage in their test rig was different. Birds made a bigger hole in the skin, drones made a bigger dent in the wing's structural members. This doesn't autoamtically scale to something like an A380, but it makes sense to do a scaled down test with cheap surplus light aviation wings before applying for funding to do it on a larger scale.
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It just goes to show that DJI drones can't bring down a jetliner.
Sunday, Oct 21, 2018. San Francisco, CA.
Authorities are investigating the crash of an airliner short of SFO's 28L runway, around 10am in the morning. The airliner declared an emergency 25 minutes prior, due to an failure of its right engine. Apparently, a large crowd of rubbernecks came to the shores of the San Francisco Bay to see the stricken plane perform an emergency landing. Soon, a 4 pound DJI drone appeared over the Bay, capturing the crowd and the airplane on video.
As the airliner descended and
Looks easily survivable to me (Score:3)
I was wondering that too (Score:2)
It didn't seem like that much of the wing was impacted, and the plane would still be flyable. For a jetliner with a much larger wing, even less of the lift surface would be impacted...
I was wondering in fact if the material of a larger jet would would be strong enough to come through the impact even better than the small plane.
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The wings on a plane are the fuel tanks.
Structurally the damage is survivable. It looks similar to bird strikes [google.com]. The difference is a bird strike is a blob of meat and blood hitting the plane. A drone strike would include lots of spark-inducing metal parts and volatile battery intruding into the fuel tank. The engines have some fire extinguishing capability (a small tank holding fire retardant). But fuel leaking from a wing catc
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It's a good thing that Jet fuel isn't that flammable. Since the tragedy of Swiss air fuel explosion, airliners are equipped with inerting systems that fill the void in fuel tanks with nitrogen rather than with standard air. You can shoot tracer rounds through a half full tank and it won't ignite.
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Not clear what the chances are of igniting fuel with the presumably shorted / destroyed lithium batteries from the drone. Probably not, but occasionally (rarely) ariliner fuel tanks can be made to explode
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
was a while ago and there have been fixes, but that doesn't mean that its impossible now to blow up fuel tanks.
There are also questions of damage to engines, or cockpit windows.
I also don't want to down small planes either.
Where's the context? (Score:2)
And more, how does this compare with a bird-strike test
Is this actually the worst case? How about hitting an engine or windscreen
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Computer simulation of engine strike. It's ugly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Mere damage to the leading edge of an aerodynamic surface can, and has, caused a crash, eg Continental Express Flight 2574
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"...the sudden in-flight loss of the partially secured left horizontal stabilizer leading edge and the immediate severe nose-down pitchover and breakup of the airplane."
The drone manufacturer's response (Score:5, Informative)
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DJI's complaint was based, among other things, on the video testing impact at a combined speed of 238 MPH rather than what the letter admitted would be a possible combined speed of 233.5 MPH (~200 MPH for the Mooney M20j, which was actually marketed as the "201" for that reason, and 33.5MPH for the drone). Big whoop. I have significant doubts that decreasing the impact speed by 2% would make a material difference in the frankly shocking amount of damage to the wing shown in the video.
The rest of the compl
Re: The drone manufacturer's response (Score:1)
The mooney can only do 200 mph above 5000 feet. At the altitude that a drone could reach a mooney, the mooney would be doing about 130 mph.
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I like how they specify that a Mooney M20J has a maximum speed of 201mph. The M20J was made from 1977-1987. The M20K, made from 1979-1985 had a top speed of 231mph. The 2016 M20 Acclaim Ultra has a cruising speed of 278mph.
The University of Dayton just said it was a M20 wing, and did not specify a sub model. DJI picked the M20J to compare, which is a 40+ year old design that hasn't been made in 31 years.
Isn't this obvious? (Score:2, Informative)
Not obvious at all (Score:5, Insightful)
The destruction of Columbia was caused (as anyone actually reading the wikipedia entry you so thoughtfully linked will see) by reentry stress and super-heated plasma burning through a relatively small flaw in the heat shield. The cause of that damage was indeed foam, but trying to compare this to a drone strike on an aircraft traveling an order of magnitude slower and not experiencing reentry stress is just as much an exercise in sensationalism as the video currently in question is.
Also, it should be noted, since you place such an emphasis on the damaging item being foam (in a clear attempt to show that a seemingly dismissive substance can be extremely dangerous) that the kind of "foam" which caused the heat shield damage on Columbia was essentially the perfect item to cause the maximum damage. It was extremely strong foam, and very light. It's lower density meant that the air was able to decelerate it greatly causing a much higher velocity collision than something more dense would have, and its strength meant that it maintained cohesion long enough to cause damage.
And finally, your dismissive use of age and the assumption that the superior knowledge of someone older must surely validate your rather spurious comparison is a pretty great example, itself, of sophistry. Well done.
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At the time of the foam strike, the orbiter was at an altitude of about 65,600 feet (20.0 km; 12.42 mi), traveling at Mach 2.46 (1,650 miles per hour or 740 meters per second).
Hmm, if only Mooney pilots can stop flying at Mach 2. Then they won't have to worry so much about drone impacts.
Science requires facts (Score:3, Insightful)
A Mooney M20 has a top speed of 165 knots and a typical cruising speed of around 130. If this is intended to provide facts why not show the results of a collision at 100, 130, or 165... nah, letâ(TM)s show almost 250 mph so we can hype the shit out of this and win the argument with people who donâ(TM)t actually know or understand what they are seeing. Maybe for the next test slam a drone into a perfectly perpendicular windshield at 1200 mph, thatâ(TM)ll really scare some folks into supporting more regulations.
Full disclosure: I am a pilot with hundreds of hours of experience. I also fly RC and build my own self piloting aircraft. I have some minor/small concerns about midair collisions with typical consumer drones, but I am far more worried about this power grab by the FAA and the long term impact it will have.
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"A Mooney M20 has a top speed of 165 knots "
Must have been a real windy day! No mention of air or ground speed. Additionally, the max airspeed permitted in class G airspace (pretty much the only space this type of accident would happen) is 250 knots.
More FUD.
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Airspeed shouldn't matter given the drone would be in the same air.
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What if there were two moneys, pulling the drone using a bit of string?
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Sometimes at large airports, small aircraft pilots will descend at high speed to integrate well with jet traffic. I used to sometimes fly the approach to San Jose in my bonanza at 170 knots ias, or about 200mph.
Airliners tend to arrive faster, so in that case 250mph is not crazy.
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A Mooney M20 has a top speed of 165 knots and a typical cruising speed of around 130
Where did you get those numbers from?
I selected your own words "Mooney M20 has a top speed", right-clicked and searched Google.
The blurb right at the top of the search results contradict your numbers:
Through the efforts of his engineering group, various improvements were made to the M20 with the goal of increasing its speed, and the M20J was introduced in July 1976. It was also known as the Mooney 201 because it was capable of 201 miles per hour (323 km/h) with its 200 horsepower (150 kW) engine.
Mooney M20
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That would be true, if they stopped making the M20 in the early 1960's. But they didn't. The M20J topped 200 mph in 1976. By 1979 the M20K would go over 230mph.
Currently, the top of the line Mooney M20 Acclaim Ultra has a cruising speed of 242 knots, or 278mph.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooney_M20
Full disclosure: I am also a pilot with hundreds of hours of experience, and the ability to see through cherry picked data from the 1950's being used to support a conspiracy theory. I am far more concerned with
Preventative Government (Score:2)
Yeah, lets use government to fix problems that don't exist yet rather than to fix actual problems.
The number of drones out there is dwarfed by the number of birds, and aircraft are already expected to survive bird strikes. In the unlikely event that an aircraft ever hits a drone, we can expect similar damage to a bird strike. Some common sense mitigation is fine - don't allow drones where there are low-flying aircraft. Next....
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Because you don't own an invisible column straight up to infinity - that's why. You rent a small patch of land from the government, and only the surface dirt. Other people can go over or under you - you don't own a small portion of the earth's core, either.
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Already done. Airports have restricted airspace all around them, usually in a kind of inverted cone pattern that protects approaching and departing aircraft. You can't fly a kite in that airspace.
IIRC the drone manufacturers are supposed to build in automatic safeguards that prevent their drones from entering such airspace. Never mind that the RC aircraft community has managed just fine without such things for decades.
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Exactly - until otherwise shown, this is a non-problem. We are addressing theory when there are so many real problems to solve.
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Even if it is a problem, which it could become with so many Joe Randoms buying drones, it's easily addressed through enforcement of existing laws. Illegally flying in restricted airspace comes with some hefty penalties.
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Birds, any bird, is a master of the sky. They can and regularly do see and avoid aircraft very well.
And yet, every year there are over 10,000 REPORTED bird strikes. And what? Zero drone strikes? I mean, QED? You claim to be a pilot, but I can easily see you are talking shit here.
The Mooney M20 has wooden wings... (Score:3)
There is a reason they choose a Mooney M20. It's one of the smallest possible piloted airplanes out there. It also has wooden wings! There is debate if this thing should even be considered safe to fly even before the question of drone strikes. I am calling this click bait and fake news!
http://www.mooneypilots.com/ma... [mooneypilots.com]
I think there are bird strikes experienced with heavier birds, and no crashing planes. Now show me this video with a deep-sea 10 wing, and I will be interested...
Drone or bird: same thing (Score:1)
Airplanes have been in danger of bird collisions since forever. Birds can weigh 2,1lb or more as well. There is no real difference to a drone.
If they have to survive bird collisions, they can survive drones.
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There is a difference. The plane they choose for their "demo" has wooden wings. I kid you not. The Mooney M20 is also particularly tiny...
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Not true. Birds do a very good job of seeing and avoiding aircraft, and bird strikes are incredibly rare. Drone close encounters with aircraft are growing. They must be regulated, must have mandated position alerting equipment (ADS-B), and their 'operators' must get training in order to interact with the national airspace system - i.e. other aircraft, or they can stay in close to the ground and withing visual range of the operator.
Birds? (Score:2)
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Birds are softer and lower density. I've hit a bird and the damage was pretty minimal. This was at 180-200mph (don't quite remember)
Still more danger from other humans & ac (Score:3)
Despite all this talk of the theoretical danger posed to manned aircraft, and even demonstrations like this, the risk from "drones" still pales in comparison to the existing risk from civil aviation pilots doing stupid things which happen all the time. For example traditional regulation requires aircraft to stay above 500' AGL unless near an airport (descending). Yet small aircraft regularly incur below that altitude without waivers. Furthermore casual pilots often ignore or don't read NOTAMs, causing interesting incidents. Xjet documented with video a plane from a local flight school that ignored the posted NOTAM about the airport being closed for a drag race and attempted to land anyway. Only after noticing equipment on the runway did the plane land on the grass next to it, running over several strung-out electrical cables. The folks setting up for the drag race gave him quite a talking to. This is but one of many incidents. Point is, talking about regulating toy RC vehicles is a bit silly when the rules governing full-scale aviation are breached regularly, or at least enforced unevenly, especially when such breaches are a far greater risk to life and property. If a small plane flied below 500 feet and encounters an rc aircraft, who's at fault? Obviously they will come down hard on the toy's owner. But the pilot was doing something wrong.
There are folks doing absolutely inappropriate and illegal things with drones, and documenting them on youtube. I think we already have enough laws to go after them and hit them hard for endangering the public.
Technology will continue to enable the individual. (Score:1)
What's the long term solution here? A person with a reasonable command of engineering principles could, over the course of 10 years and maybe $150k, develop a credible device for downing low/slow aircraft with off the shelf components. In 20-30 years the ability to develop bio-weapons at home is going to be materially better than it is today. In 100 years the ability to cobble together a nuclear device might be within the realm of the home gamer. Is this the beginning of the Great Filter? It seems unte
This seems like the wrong approach (Score:2)
This seems like the wrong approach to take. Why show what it looks like when a drone and an aircraft collide? There are already rules about operating things around airports... or are we to assume that drones are routinely flying at 20,000+ feet in normal flight patterns?
It seems that there are already laws that cover the physical issues with drones... so why all the made-up hand wringing? I am guessing that there are things that can be observed fairly easily with drones that were not so easily observed befo
This warning brought to you by Amazon (Score:1)