Drones have been increasing in popularity and are able to cause skin injuries ranging from minor abrasions to severe lacerations. The objective of this study was to determine the aspects of drone blades that cause injuries, and to help manufacturers design safer drones by suggesting an injury threshold. The blade tip thickness, blade length, angular velocity, and blade tip speed of a variety of popular drones were measured. The injury caused by each drone blade contacting a fetal bovine skin surrogate at different speeds was recorded. Blade tip speed had the highest correlation to injury severity, while blade tip thickness, blade length, and rpm had little to no correlation with the resulting injury. Blade tip speeds above 25 m/s resulted in minor abrasions, and speeds above 60 m/s resulted in minor lacerations. To prevent severe injuries, drone manufacturers should design drones with blade tip speeds below the threshold of 60 m/s.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this article Subscribe and saveSpringer+ Basic
€34.99 /Month
Price includes VAT (Germany)
Instant access to the full article PDF.
Explore related subjectsDiscover the latest articles and news from researchers in related subjects, suggested using machine learning. ReferencesBerthe, J., F. Coussa, P. Beillas, et al. Drone impact on human beings: experimental investigation with sUAS. Conference ASIDIC - Aerospace Structural Impact Dynamics International, Madrid, Spain, 2019.
Campolettano, E. T., M. L. Bland, R. A. Gellner, et al. Ranges of injury risk associated with impact from unmanned aircraft systems. Ann. Biomed. Eng. 45:2733–2741, 2017.
Duma, L.A., A. Bhandare, T. Canfield, et al. Experimental analysis of skin and eye surrogate models for drone blade lacerations. Biomedical Engineering Society Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA, 2019.
Giudice, J. S., W. Zeng, T. Wu, et al. An analytical review of the numerical methods used for finite element modeling of traumatic brain injury. Ann. Biomed. Eng. 47:1855–1872, 2019.
Gabler, L. F., J. R. Crandall, and M. B. Panzer. Development of a second-order system for rapid estimation of maximum brain strain. Ann. Biomed. Eng. 47:1971–1981, 2019.
Moskowitz, E. E., Y. M. Siegel-Richman, G. Hertner, et al. Aerial drone misadventure: a novel case of trauma resulting in ocular globe rupture. Am. J. Ophth. Case Rep. 10:35–37, 2018.
Papy, A., C. Robbe, N. Nsiampa, et al. Definition of a standardized skin penetration surrogate for blunt impacts. IRCOBI Conference, 2012.
Ranamukhaarachchi, S., S. Lehnert, S. Ranamukhaarachchi, et al. A micromechanical comparison of human and porcine skin before and after preservation by freezing for medical device development. Sci. Rep. 6:32074, 2016.
Reed, M.P., L.W. Schneider, and R.E. Burney. Laboratory investigations and mathematical modeling of airbag-induced skin burns. SAE Paper 942217, 1994.
Saboori, P., and G. Walker. Brain injury and impact characteristics. Ann. Biomed. Eng. 47:1982–1992, 2019.
The authors acknowledge and thank the Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership (MAAP) and the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS) for supporting this research.
Author information Authors and AffiliationsInstitute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS), Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, 24060, USA
Lauren A. Duma, Mark T. Begonia, Barry Miller & Stefan M. Duma
Correspondence to Stefan M. Duma.
Additional informationAssociate Editor Thurmon E. Lockhart oversaw the review of this article.
Publisher's NoteSpringer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
About this article Cite this articleDuma, L.A., Begonia, M.T., Miller, B. et al. Proposed Injury Threshold for Drone Blade Lacerations. Ann Biomed Eng 49, 1125–1127 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-021-02759-2
Received: 17 February 2021
Accepted: 20 February 2021
Published: 08 March 2021
Issue Date: April 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-021-02759-2
RetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
Search and Browse the WWW like it's 1997 | Search results from DuckDuckGo
HTML:
3.2
| Encoding:
UTF-8
| Version:
0.7.4