Abstract

Menet Aerospace, a company based in Wisconsin, USA, specializes in manufacturing tethered unmanned aircraft systems (TeUAS) or drones that provide secure, on-demand wireless communications. These drones are used by different organizations for various applications, including telecommunications, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Menet Aero worked with Wolf Star Technologies to implement the True-Load load reconstruction software on their hexacopter drone. The goal was to gain a higher fidelity understanding of the loading on the drone to design and optimize better aircraft. The True-Load technology uses finite element analysis (FEA) models and strain gauges to reconstruct the operating loads of the drone. The company used a hexacopter with carbon-fibre arms and swapped out the arms with thin aluminium tubes to make it easier to model and apply strain gauges.

They placed 12 strain gauges on the arms and used a data acquisition system (DAQ) to collect strain data during various events. The True-Load software identified the optimal strain gauge placement and calculated the operating loads of the drone based on the measured strain data. The results showed excellent correlation between the measured and simulated strain data, indicating that the calculated loads were accurate.

This project allowed Menet Aero to acquire valuable data on their drone designs, which can be used to optimize the weight and cost of their aircraft. The True-Load methodology proved to be an efficient and effective use of FEA models and testing techniques, providing a small investment in strain gauges for mission-critical data.