Study on the head and neck injury risk impacted by UAV: effect of impact velocity, angle, location, and mass

AbstractThe number of the collision accidents between Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and people on the ground increase in recent years. It is necessary to clarify human injury characteristics brought by the impact of UAV and promote its management. This study focuses on head and neck injury risk resulted from the impact of the UAV with a relatively large mass, and the difference brought by the UAV with a small mass. First, the model of the Y3-dummy (Hybrid III 50th) is developed. Second, simulations are conducted to analyse head and neck injury characteristics from Y3’s impact under different velocities, angles, and locations. With increasing the impact velocity, HIC and Nij increase with an exponential function and a power function, respectively. When the vertical impact velocity exceeds 5 m/s, both head and neck have a high probability of injury, while for the horizontal impact, the corresponding velocity is 9 m/s. As the impact angle increases, the changes of HIC satisfy the form of the sum of two exponential functions, and Nij changes in the form of the sum of a power function and a quadratic polynomial function. When the impact angle is close to 0°, the head injury risk is relatively high, while for 58°, the neck is more likely to be injury. The injuries induced by the top of mainframe and the front of the long arm are more serious. Finally, the differences in head and neck injury characteristics under different velocities and locations for UAVs with different masses are compared.Keywords: Small UAVdroneimpacthead and neck injuryfinite element analysis Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51975041) and the Funding of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for Civil Aircraft (Grant No. MJ-2018-F-18).